A method of inspecting solder joints that connect surface-mount electronic components to printed circuit boards is provided. Preferably, the method includes the steps of obtaining an image of a plurality of the leads of the electronic component, for each obtained image, representing segments of the image that correspond to each of the leads by polygons, projecting pixel intensity values within each polygon each onto an axial dimension to provide a measured waveform, comparing the measured waveform for each lead with a corresponding model waveform, and, classifying each lead as being either satisfactory or unsatisfactory on the basis of said comparisons.