1. A dark field surface inspection tool comprising: an illumination system configured to scan a light beam across an inspection surface, thereby generating light scattering patterns associated with selected portions of the inspection surface; a photodetector array arranged at a fourier plane to receive the light scattering patterns from the work piece, the array comprising a two-dimensional array of light sensitive pixels configured to capture two-dimensional images of the light scattering patterns; and circuitry for receiving the images and conducting adaptive fourier filtering of image data to selectively filter image pixels to enhance signal to noise ratio in the remaining image pixels.