Patent ID: 7092107

Claim:
A method for determining surface topology of a portion of a three-dimensional structure, comprising: (a) providing an array of incident light beams propagating in an optical path leading through a focusing optics and through a probing face; the focusing optics defining one or more focal planes forward said probing face in a position changeable by said optics, 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) 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.