Patent ID: 8659698

Claim:
A 3D scanning apparatus, comprising: a camera with a dual-band image sensor, with some pixels sensitive in the visible optical band and some other pixels sensitive in the invisible optical band; a fixed pattern projector, having a single fixed mask of varying transparency and two or more infrared light sources behind said single fixed pattern mask having different relative positions, configured to project patterns in the invisible optical band on an object; wherein said camera is configured to acquire a visible light image of the object and an invisible light image of the object and the patterns, said visible and visible light images captured at the same time, and to reconstruct a 3D shape of the object based on said acquired patterns; wherein said projected pattern varies according to the combination of spatial variance of the single pattern mask and a difference between the different relative positions; and wherein the pattern mask has a sine-function varying transparency having a period D, and three infrared light emitting diodes placed at distances D/3 so that sequential switching between them results in sequential projection of three sine-modulated patterns, mutually phase shifted by 2π/3.