Patent ID: 7016519

Claim:
A method of detecting three-dimensional information, comprising: illuminating an object sequentially with, a first illumination light which has a linearly varying intensity and a second illumination light which has a constant intensity; acquiring an image of the object illuminated by said two illumination lights such that a rate of change of an image pickup gain is faster than a rate of change of intensity of the first illumination light, wherein the image of the object is acquired at least two times, once during each illumination, and with a same pick-up gain during each illumination by an image pick-up element having storage effect; and detecting a distance between individual points of the object on the basis of the image obtained; wherein the distance between respective points of the object is detected at a speed at which three-dimensional image is output in real time, the three-dimensional image being output within a period of time corresponding to one normal image frame of a video signal being received by an image pickup device.