Abstract: An apparatus for creating a three-dimensional perspective image of an object surface. The apparatus includes a laser, a computer system and a video camera with a sensor matrix. The laser is moved to a plurality of positions to project a light ray upon an object surface. Each projected light ray is parallel to the optical axis of the video camera. The sensor matrix of the video camera detects an image area corresponding to each one of the projected light rays. The computer system identifies an image point from each image area, calculates an image of the object surface defined by three-dimensional grid coordinates and transforms the image coordinates into three-dimensional coordinates which define the real object surface. In another embodiment, a number of lasers are arranged in an array to project parallel light rays upon the object surface. The lasers are actuated according to a predetermined sequence to project parallel light rays upon the object surface one at a time.

Abstract: A first method for exact and inexact matching of documents stored in a document database includes the step of converting the documents in the database to a compacted tokenized form. A search string or search document is then converted to the compact tokenized form and compared to determine if the test string occurs in the documents of the database or whether the documents in the database correspond to the test document. A second method for inexact matching of a test document to the documents in the database includes generating sets of one or more floating point values for each document in the database and for the test document. The sets of floating point numbers for the database are then compared to the set for the test document to determine a degree of matching. A threshold value is established and each document in the database which generates a matching value closer to the test document that the threshold is considered to be an inexact match of the test document.