Patent ID: 8878905

Claim:
A scanner for obtaining and/or measuring the 3D geometry of at least a part of the surface of an object, said scanner comprising: at least one camera accommodating an array of sensor elements, a light source for generating a probe light incorporating a spatial pattern, an optical system for transmitting the probe light towards the object thereby illuminating at least a part of the object with said spatial pattern in one or more configurations and for transmitting at least a part of the light returned from the object to the camera, a focus element within the optical system for varying a position of a focus plane of the spatial pattern on the object, an obtaining unit for obtaining at least one image from said array of sensor elements, an evaluating unit for evaluating a correlation measure at each focus plane position between at least one image pixel and a weight function, where the weight function is determined based on information of the configuration of the spatial pattern, wherein the correlation measure is calculated as a dot product computed for each of a plurality of said focus plane positions; a data processor for: determining by analysis of the correlation measure the in-focus position(s) of: each of a plurality of image pixels for a range of focus plane positions, or each of a plurality of groups of image pixels for a range of focus plane positions, and transforming in-focus data into 3D real world coordinates.