These surface scanning techniques are in routine clinical use as well as in numerous research projects. Following are a few examples. The MGI laser scanner. The patient sits on a chair which is rotated under computer control. A low-power laser line illuminates the face and is viewed by a camera from 2 different directions.
Acquisition takes a few seconds, generating large numbers of measured points.
These are 3 children, volunteers in a long term normal growth study. These images can of course be viewed from any angle and compared with earlier and later images. The low res image is poorly rendered on my browser. Click image for larger image. Dark hair is usually not registered.