<p>Provided are a defect inspection method and device which detect a circuit pattern containing a defect or a foreign matter among various circuit patterns formed repeatedly on a substrate by distinguishing the defective circuit pattern from normal circuit patterns without depending on an optical condition. The method includes: a step of setting a target local region containing a target pixel to be cut out and a plurality of corresponding local regions containing a plurality of pixels corresponding to the target pixel to be cut out for an image signal acquired from the substrate to be inspected; a step of searching for a similarity between the image signal of the target local region which has been set and the image signal of the plurality of corresponding local regions which have been set in the aforementioned step; a step of determining a plurality of image signals of the corresponding local regions similar to the image signal of the target local region by using the similarity information to be searched; and a step of comparing the determined image signals of the corresponding local regions to the image signal of the target local region so as to detect an overall defect.</p>
