Patent ID: 7769429

Claim:
A method of determining the presence of impingement between at least first and second bodies, comprising: (a) for each of the first and second bodies, obtaining a respective set of data indicative of three-dimensional (3D) coordinates of points of a surface of the body; (b) associating a first reference element with the first body and associating a second reference element with the second body, wherein each of the first and second references elements comprises a respective plurality of markers; (c) determining a spatial relationship between (1) at least some of the points of the surface of the first body determined in step (a) obtaining and (2) the markers of the first reference element; (d) determining a spatial relationship between (1) at least some of the points of the surface of the second body determined in step (a) and (2) the markers of the second reference element; (e) displacing at least one of the first and second bodies relative to the other body; (f) determining 3D coordinates of the markers of the first and second reference elements; and (g) using at least (1) the 3D coordinates of the markers of the first and second reference elements determined in step (f), (2) the spatial relationship determined in step (c), and (3) the spatial relationship determined in step (d), to determine whether a surface point of one of the first and second bodies coincides with a surface point of the other body, wherein step (g) comprises (h) defining a transformation to calculate spatial indices for each surface point of the first and second bodies; (i) forming up a lookup table, wherein the lookup table comprises an array of values, a first value representing a free spatial position and a second value representing an occupied spatial position and further wherein the entries to the lookup table are spatial indices determined using the transformation defined in step (h); and (j) searching the lookup table to determine the presence of impingement.