To solve the problem that, in a method for inspecting the flaw of a circuit pattern, operation for expanding and contracting the image data of a pattern becoming a standard is performed to form a master pattern having allowable maximum and minimum dimensions and the image data obtained from an article to be inspected is compared with the master pattern to discover a flaw but, in expansion and contraction image processing for forming the master pattern, processing for adding and subtracting peripheral pixels at every pixel is performed but it is difficult to perform expansion and contraction in a definite ratio by the ratio of line widths in the case of the standard pattern containing various line widths.

The distance data from a background is imparted to the pixels belonging to the standard pattern and pixels are eliminated until the distance data larger than oneself are missing in the peripheral pixels to form a skeleton pattern representing the skeleton of the standard pattern. The pixels present within a range wherein the distance data having the pixels belonging to the skeleton pattern is multiplied by a predetermined magnification are set as the master pattern.

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