Patent ID: 7990548

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 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 plane; the beams generating a plurality of illuminated spots on the structure; (b) using a detector, detecting intensity of returned light beams propagating from each of these 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; wherein said optical path of said incident light beams to said sensing face excludes passage through said detector.