Patent ID: 7630089

Claim:
A method for determining surface topology of a portion of a three-dimensional dental structure, comprising providing an apparatus comprising a focusing optics and a probing member having a front face and a sensing face; the focusing optics defining one or more focal planes forward of said sensing face in a position changeable by said optics; (a) providing an array of incident light beams propagating in an optical path leading through said focusing optics and through said probing member, each light beam having its focus on one of said one or more focal planes; the beams generating a plurality of illuminated spots on the structure, said apparatus being hand held to direct said optical path at a desired location with respect to said dental structure via said sensing face; (b) detecting intensity of returned light beams propagating from each of the plurality of illuminated spots along an optical path opposite to that of the incident light; (c) repeating steps (a) and (b) a plurality of times, each time changing position of the focal plane relative to the structure; (d) for each of the illuminated spots, determining a spot-specific position, being the position of the respective focal plane yielding a maximum measured intensity of a respective returned light beam; and (e) generating data representative of the topology of said portion.