Patent ID: 8428393

Claim:
A method of fitting acquired fiducial data to a set of fiducials on a fiducial plate; said method comprising: translating an imaging apparatus and the fiducial plate relative to each other in a plane parallel fashion to capture image data having image features with an image feature center, the image features being positioned at discrete locations with respect to the set of fiducials on the fiducial plate; mapping local frame fiducial coordinates to the image data captured by the imaging apparatus by at least in part calculating an absolute location for each captured image feature center relative to a corresponding fiducial on the fiducial plate in fiducial plate coordinates establishing a conversion from coordinates obtained from the image data to ideal fiducial coordinates using a data processing component, the establishing being based at least in part on the mapping of local frame fiducial coordinates to the image data and at least in part on estimating an inter-fiducial spacing of the image data using at least one of a predetermined fiducial pitch, a magnification of the imaging apparatus and a dimension of the image data; employing a non-linear transformation to quantify at least one of independent scale factors in an X-Y plane, orthogonality errors in a camera pixel arrangement and a keystone distortion in the image data; wherein based on the conversion using the data processing component, the absolute location indicating a distance measurement in fiducial plate coordinates; and based on at least one calculated absolute location of the identified acquired image feature centers, selectively modifying a structure represented by the identified acquired image feature center.