Patent ID: 8314794

Claim:
A method for generating a digital representation of a surface of an object from point data indicative of coordinates of points on the surface, the method comprising: receiving a point data item indicative of coordinates of a point in a first sub-volume of a plurality of sub-volumes of a volume to be scanned; associating the point data item with the first sub-volume; determining whether a count of point data items associated with the first sub-volume and not having been used as an input for computing a local surface representation exceeds a first predetermined threshold; computing a local surface representation associated with the first sub-volume from received point data items associated with at least the first sub-volume based on an outcome of the determining whether the count of point data items exceeds the first predetermined threshold; determining whether a count of computed local surface representations that have not yet been used as input for computing a surface representation of the surface of the object exceeds a second predetermined threshold; and computing the surface representation of the surface of the object from a set of computed local surface representations associated with respective sub-volumes based on an outcome of the determining whether the count of computed local surface representations exceeds the second predetermined threshold, the computing including clustering the set of the computed local surface representations based on one or more predetermined proximity conditions.