Patent ID: 7164785

Claim:
A system usable to capture a three dimensional (3-D) image data, comprising: an image capture device that captures a plurality of portions of an image of an object, each captured portion of the image is based on a scan width of the image capture device; a range finding device that is a separate device from the image capture device, and obtains at least one range data value for each captured portion of the image, the at least one range data value being different from captured image data, and corresponding to a position in each captured portion of the image; a base to which the image capture device and the separate range finding device are mounted, the base adapted to move in increments based on the scan width of the image capture device; and a processing system that processes the plurality of captured portions of the image and the at least one range data value corresponding to the at least one position in the captured portion of the image to form a 3-D image. wherein, if a range data value is not obtained by the range finding device, the at least one range data value corresponding to the position in the captured portion of the image is set to a predetermined value, and the processing system selects a range data value reference as a depth buffer in the 3-D image to which each of the at least one range data value is referenced.