A fast and reliable system for 3D surface acquisition and reconstruction

A prototype 3D scanning system is presented together with a novel surface reconstruction algorithm to obtain an explicit 3D reconstruction of both open and closed surfaces, with particular attention to anatomical parts for biomedical applications. The whole system is based on acquisition of unorganized range data by laser scanning and successive image processing, by expanding and fitting a regular geometrical model within the range data, for surface reconstruction. The prototype system proved to be working finely, with an estimated resolution < 10 &mu;m, a repeatability < 50 mum, and an acquisition noise of similar to 170 mum (rms value). Simulations with a synthetic test surface are described to provide quantitative figures on the robustness to noise of the proposed reconstruction algorithm. Reconstruction of 3D models of human organs are presented as well.