A problem in the inspection of transparent wafers and disks is the detection of top surface particles. More precisely, it is being able to assign a scattering site as being due to a particle at the top or bottom surface of a transparent wafer. A method of the present invention is to use an elliptical mirror, with a pinhole at its top focus, together with a focused beam. The focused beam will diverge as it passes through the transparent wafer and as a result any particle on the bottom surface will see a lower optical intensity and will appear weaker than a top surface particle. The suppression of scattered light from the bottom surface occurs because the source of the scattered light (the bottom surface) is far from the bottom foci of the elliptical mirror. This means that the light from the bottom surface, which arrives inside the ellipsoid, will be out of focus at the top foci of the ellipsoid and as a result very little light from the bottom surface will pass through the pinhole at the top foci of the elliptical mirror. This reduction of light from the bottom surface can be further improved by making the pinhole diameter to be substantially less than the thickness of the transparent wafer.