Patent ID: 8117668

Claim:
A scanning probe for capturing data from a plurality of points on the surface of an object by irradiating the object with a light stripe and detecting light reflected from the object surface, the scanning probe comprising: (a) stripe generator for generating and emitting the light stripe; (b) a camera comprising an imaging sensor having an array of pixels to detect the light stripe reflected from the object surface; (c) intensity adjuster stripe during acquisition of a single frame, in dependence upon intensities detected by the camera: wherein the camera and/or the stripe generator are configured such that different subsets of the array of pixels at different times detect light reflected from the light stripe during the acquisition of the frame, the different subsets of the array of pixels corresponding to different positions on the detected light stripe reflected from the object surface, and wherein the intensity adjuster stripe is configured to adjust the intensity subsequent to and in dependence upon the detection of the intensities by the subset of pixels, which adjustment takes place during acquisition of the frame.