Handheld optical measurement apparatus and method of aligning a handheld optical measurement apparatus

Abstract

A handheld optical measurement apparatus (100) comprises an optical measurement system (200, 201) comprising an optical reception path (202), a display device (116), and a housing (101) comprising a longitudinal measurement axis (113) and the optical measurement system (200, 201), the optical reception path (202) being coaxial with the longitudinal measurement axis (113). An alignment system is also provided comprising an extended light source (110) configured as a predetermined shape and mounted on the housing (101) and disposed off-axis with respect to the longitudinal measurement axis (113), the extended light source being configured to illuminate a reflective target. An optical sensor device (112) is mounted on the housing (101) off-axis relative to the longitudinal measurement axis (113) and configured to receive light reflected by the reflective target and to capture an image comprising the light. A processing resource (208, 210, 212, 214, 216) is operably coupled to the optical sensor device (112) and the display device (116). The processing resource is configured to display on the display device (116) the image captured by the optical sensor device (112) and substantially contemporaneously display an alignment reference (220) on the display device (116), the alignment reference (220) being fixed in position and size, and providing, when in use, a reference to facilitate manual alignment of the optical measurement system (200, 201) with the reflective target. The processing resource is also configured to assess alignment of the optical measurement system (200, 201) with respect to fidelity of shape and centrality of the reflected light in the image captured by the optical sensor device (112).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.