Patent Document ID: 9418431
Application ID: 13720347
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for determining information about a shape of a pipe, the pipe having a pipe end portion at an end of the pipe and a pipe body extending along a longitudinal axis between ends of the pipe, the method comprising: projecting a plurality of lines of light onto the pipe, each projected line intersecting a surface of the pipe at a different location along the longitudinal axis, the projected lines being distributed over the pipe end portion and at least some of the pipe body; acquiring a sequence of images of the surface of the pipe intersected by the projected lines of light while rotating the pipe about the longitudinal axis, each image acquired for a respective pipe rotation angle, wherein pipe rotation angles corresponding to consecutive images are different from each other by a predetermined angular increment; for each acquired image, identifying curves corresponding to the projected lines of light on the surface of the pipe; determining a location of an extremum for each of a first plurality of the curves that are distributed over the pipe body; establishing a reference line based on the location of the extrema for the first plurality of the curves; determining a location of an extremum for one of a second plurality of the curves that are distributed over the pipe end portion; and calculating a deviation between (i) the extremum of the one of the second plurality of the curves and (ii) the reference line, the calculated deviation corresponding to the pipe rotation angle for which the image was acquired; and determining information about the shape of the pipe by analyzing a dependence of the calculated deviations on the pipe rotation angles.