Patent ID: 6963354

Claim:
An imaging lidar comprising: a pulsed laser for generating at a pulse rate a sequence of light beam pulses each having a pulse width; a spatial discriminator coupled to the pulsed laser for steering the light beam pulse sequence in a plurality of line scans describing an area surrounding a target, each said line scan including a plurality of said light beam pulses; a photomultiplier tube for detecting energy from said light beam pulses scattered by said target and for generating an output signal representative of said scattered light beam pulse energy; an image acquisition controller coupled to said pulsed laser and to said photomultiplier tube for selecting said pulse width and said pulse rate of said light beam pulses and for generating a display signal from said output signal of said photomultiplier tube; and a display coupled to said controller for generating an image from said display signal representative of said target; wherein said pulse rate greater than 600 KHz.