Abstract: A vein imager includes: two photodetectors, a first and second lasers configured to respectively emit an infrared beam of light and a human-visible beam of light; a combiner to coaxially align the two beams; and a scanner that scans the coaxial beam in a pattern and onto a skin surface of a patient. The first photodetector receives the infrared wavelength reflected from the patient as a contrasted image of subcutaneous veins, and surface reflection noise due to skin surface topology, and outputs a first signal representing that contrasted image of subcutaneous veins and noise due to skin surface topology. The second photo detector receives the human-visible wavelength reflected from the skin surface and outputs a second signal representing a contrasted image of the topology. The second signal is subtracted from the first signal to remove the noise, permitting projection of a surface-noise-free vein image onto the skin surface.