Patent ID: 9532029
Filing Date: 2016-12-27
CPC Classification: A61B,G01B,G06T,H04N

Claim Text:
1. A system for creating a 3D model of a surface of an object immersed in a transparent liquid within a stationary cylindrical transparent tank, comprising: a rotating mount aligned to rotate around a central axis of the cylindrical transparent tank; a camera fixedly attached to the rotating mount outside the cylindrical transparent tank for capturing images of the object immersed in the transparent fluid; a first laser line generator fixedly attached to the rotating mount outside the cylindrical transparent tank and configured to project a first laser line onto the object to simultaneously illuminate a plurality of points on the object, the first laser line being perpendicular to a rotational plane of the rotating mount and aligned to the central axis, the first laser line generator being positioned at a first angle relative to a field of view of the camera; a second laser line generator fixedly attached to the rotating mount outside the cylindrical transparent tank to project a second laser line perpendicular to the rotational plane and aligned to the central axis, the second laser line generator being positioned at a second angle relative to the field of view; an actuator for rotating the rotating mount; a controller for driving the actuator to rotate the rotating mount and to capture the images at selected angular positions of the rotating mount; and an image processor comprising an image correction function implemented as machine executable instructions, the image correction function comprising (a) a registered image warping function configured to correct the images for refraction of light propagating from the first and second laser lines on the object through the transparent liquid, a wall of the cylindrical transparent tank, and air to the camera, and (b) a 3D coordinate function adapted to determine, from the images as corrected by the registered image warping function and for each laser line within each image, a plurality of 3D positions where the laser line is incident upon a surface of the object.