To make possible the in-line inspection of a pattern of an insulating material. A patterned wafer 40 formed with a pattern by a resist film is placed on a specimen table 21 of a patterned wafer inspection apparatus 1 in opposed relation to a SEM 3. An electron beam 10 of a large current is emitted from an electron gun 11 and the pattern of the patterned wafer is scanned only once at a high scanning rate. The secondary electrons generated by this scanning from the patterned wafer are detected by a secondary electron detector 16 thereby to acquire an electron beam image. Using this electron beam image, the comparative inspection is conducted on the patterned wafer through an arithmetic operation unit 32 and a defect determining unit 33.

Since an electron beam image of high contrast can be obtained by scanning an electron beam only once, a patterned wafer inspection method using a SEM can be implemented in the IC fabrication method.