Patent ID: 9418431
Filing Date: 2016-08-16
CPC Classification: G01B,G06T,H04N,Y10T

Claim Text:
1. A method for determining information about a shape of a pipe, the pipe having a pipe end portion at an end of the pipe and a pipe body extending along a longitudinal axis between ends of the pipe, the method comprising: projecting a plurality of lines of light onto the pipe, each projected line intersecting a surface of the pipe at a different location along the longitudinal axis, the projected lines being distributed over the pipe end portion and at least some of the pipe body; acquiring a sequence of images of the surface of the pipe intersected by the projected lines of light while rotating the pipe about the longitudinal axis, each image acquired for a respective pipe rotation angle, wherein pipe rotation angles corresponding to consecutive images are different from each other by a predetermined angular increment; for each acquired image,