Three-dimensional sensor with counterposed channels

A method of merging point clouds, comprising:

• generating reconstructed surface points in a first counterposed channel's point cloud;
• generating reconstructed surface points in a second counterposed channel's point cloud;
• identifying, for a selected reconstructed surface point in the first counterposed channel's point cloud, reconstructed surface points in the second counterposed channel's point cloud that are near an imaging system ray for the selected reconstructed surface point in the first counterposed channel's point cloud;
• calculating a projection of each of the identified near points in the second counterposed channel's point cloud onto the imaging system ray for the selected reconstructed surface point in the first counterposed channel's point cloud;
• calculating an average projection of each of the identified near points in the second counterposed channel's point cloud onto the imaging system ray of the selected reconstructed surface point in the second counterposed channel's point cloud;
• and
• moving the selected reconstructed surface point in the first counterposed channel's point cloud along its imaging system ray a portion of the distance towards the calculated average projection of each of the identified near point in the second counterposed channel's point cloud.

A method of merging point clouds, comprising

• generating, with a first counterposed channel, a first point cloud having a first plurality of surface points corresponding to a target surface;
• generating, with a second counterposed channel, a second point cloud having a second plurality of surface points corresponding to the target surface;
• determining first and second non-empty portions corresponding to each the first and second point clouds;
• identifying a transformation for each the first and second point clouds;
• determining the relative error for each the first and second point clouds based on the identified transformation;
• subtracting the relative error from each the first and second point clouds;
• aligning the first and second point clouds in the first and second non-empty portions;
• and
• generating a dimensional profile of the target surface based on the alignment.