Field of View

The field of view of the scanner determines the largest object that can be imaged using a single scan. The field of view is normally expressed as an angle and it describes the angle of a cone within which an object must be placed for the scanner to be able to image it. The field of view cone is illustrated in the following figure. The tip of the cone is at the center of the imaging lens. Obviously the larger the target to be imaged the further away from the scanner it must be placed. A disadvantage of this is that the accuracy of the scanner generally decreases at longer ranges, so a large field of view is generally very attractive as it allows large targets to be imaged with high accuracy.

» Back to overview of 3D scanner technology.