A system for dark-field inspection of a specimen, such as a semiconductor wafer (108), that uses a laser light source (101) for providing a beam of light. The system includes a light source (101) providing a beam, a traveling lens acousto-optic device (104) having an active region and responsive to an RF input signal to concurrently generate multiple traveling lenses in said active region, each lens having a focus, said traveling lens acousto-optic device (104) being operative to receive the light beam and generate multiple spot beams at the respective focus of each of the generated travelinglenses, said multiple spot beams scanning a first surface of said specimen, whereby a corresponding plurality of at least one of reflected beams and transmitted beams are generated; whereas at least one of reflected beams and transmitted beams comprises bright field and dark field components, and dark field optics for collecting and detecting the dark field component.