Patent ID: 8244025

Claim:
A method of coalescing information about inspected objects comprising: acquiring an image set of an object to be inspected, said image set having a three-dimensional model of said object and a plurality of two-dimensional images of said object; identifying a location of interest on a surface of said modeled object; designating global coordinate points of said three-dimensional model that characterize said location of interest of said modeled object; creating a markup tag of information that annotates said location of interest; associating said markup tag with said designated global coordinate points of said three-dimensional model; conveying said markup tag when viewing any one of said plurality of two-dimensional images of said image set that have at least one image point that correlates to a corresponding designated global coordinate point of said three-dimensional model that characterize said location of interest; including a range map corresponding to each of said two dimensional images, each said range map providing range data correlating points on said two-dimensional images to respective points on said three-dimensional model; and wherein said range data in each said range map comprises points having a one-to-one correspondence between image points on each of said two-dimensional images and points on a respective range map, and each said point in said range data comprises surface location and depth information.