Patent ID: 7872760

Claim:
Method for recording at least one of contour data and optical properties of a three-dimensional, semi-transparent object, on the basis of an interference or auto-correlation measurement, comprising the steps of: generating a bundle of rays from at least one light source of short coherence length; passing the bundle of rays through a beam splitter and subsequently guiding the bundle of rays, through a focusing optical system, to the object where the rays are reflected as a beam; splitting off a reference beam from the bundle of rays in the beam splitter and reflecting the reference beam by a plane surface of a reference mirror movable along the reference beam, where by moving the reference mirror, a position relative to a signal generating plane is fixed relative to the object; and bringing together the beam reflected from the object and the beam reflected from the reference mirror and transferring into an image sensor having pixels, the image sensor including means for recording at least one of temporally and spatially altered signal patterns upon passing through a signal recovering surface, wherein the bundle of rays is subdivided into spatially distanced parallel single light rays before impinging upon the beam splitter, causing individual light rays to each illuminate a pixel or pixel group and the single light rays are sufficiently spaced in relation to one another such that each said illuminated pixel or pixel group is surrounded by a non-illuminated pixel region.