Abstract: There is disclosed a mobile pavement surface scanning system and method. In an embodiment, the system comprises one or more light sources mounted on the platform for illuminating a pavement surface, one or more stereoscopic image capturing devices mounted on the platform that capture sequential images of the illuminated pavement surface and a movement sensor that encodes movement of the platform and provides a synchronization signal for time or distance synchronized image capture. One or more processors synchronize the images captured by the image capturing devices and stamps the images with one or more of time and distance data, calculate 3D elevation for each point on the pavement surface using stereoscopic principles, and assesses the quality of the pavement surface to determine the level of pavement surface deterioration.