Profile detection by projection of coloured patterns

The paper presents a study to detect the three-dimensional profile of an object using a techniquebased on the projection of colour-coded lines. The accessibility at low-cost of projectors and digitalphotographic cameras has approved the employment and the development of these techniques. Theyprovide information concerning the profile through the acquisition of a couple of images. The firstone concerns a reference plane and it is captured only once, while the second one refers to theobject image.The proposed methodology simplifies the individuation of homologous lines within the two images,when grating projection techniques are employed. Even though these methods are conceptually verysimple, they are rarely applied because of this difficulty in stating the correspondence betweenobserved deformation and projected line. The attribution of a different colour to every single line, orto a set of them, introduces an element useful for their selection.After the image acquisition, the data pertaining to the profile are extracted examining the image bymeans of an algorithm developed in Matlab language for this application. The research work is inprogress beyond the results presented in this paper, which already represent a excellent startingpoint for further studies and evolutions of the technique.