Amazing Leica scanner!

<p>I have been watching a crime investigation show on the Biography channel on DirecTV called Crime 360 and the first three shows I've seen so far show police departments in three U.S. cities using a Leica scanner on a tripod to capture awesome 3-D images of rooms and outdoor areas where crimes have occurred. The cities so far have been in Indiana, New York, and another I can't recall at the moment. It seems that Leica is successfully selling these to one police department after another! I also saw a male use it to photograph the original painting of The Last Supper last year in Italy because that painting is deteriorating. As far as police use goes, they bring the crime scene scans into a computer with which they can zoom in and out and spin the scene all the way around in order to review complete scene details. Awesome! The image I captured below shows a crime scene investigator setting the scanner up to completely scan an apartment living room in New York containing a dead male tenant who had been stabbed almost 50 times in the face, skull, chest, and back. I wonder what this scanner costs?</p><div></div>

<p>Probably not cheap! But if it matters, this is a Leica Geosystems product, not a Leica Camera product. They were Kern and Co., then they bought Leitz in the 80s, and sold Leica Camera in the 90s. </p>

<p>Technology to recreate 3D scenes from photographs is being heavily researched in the CG field. Eventually (I think even now) you can take your digicam and snap a bunch of pics and process them in to a 3D scene. Its used a lot in movies.</p>

Fuji's already released a 3D camera with 2 lenses. I've ordered one and it's in the mail. I can't wait to play around with it!

<p>I used one of these Leica laser scanners during my masters degree for landscape surveying. We were told that the full kit cost roughly £20,000. So its probably out of the price range for most people.</p>

<p>As for the images it produces, these are laser scans rather than conventional digital images. Basically the unit projects a green laser than measures distance (like a laser rangefinder). It does this many thousands of times a second to create a 3D model of the the scene you've captured, which you can then pan around in like you mentioned.</p>

<p>Below is a link to a 3D image of Britain's largest underground cave chamber:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.mdl.co.uk/news/MDL_CREATES_FIRST_COMPLETE_3D_MODEL_OF_GAPING_GILL.html">http://www.mdl.co.uk/news/MDL_CREATES_FIRST_COMPLETE_3D_MODEL_OF_GAPING_GILL.html</a></p>

<p>Caving's my other interest aside from photography, if you hadn't guessed.</p>

<p>Chris</p>