SYSTEM AND METHOD OF CALIBRATING A DIRECTIONAL LIGHT SOURCE RELATIVE TO A CAMERA'S FIELD OF VIEW

1 . A method of calibrating a light source, comprising:

projecting by a directional light source an image onto a three-dimensional surface of at least one object, the image include a plurality of points of light;

performing a plurality of sweeping operations;

capturing images of the sweeps;

producing horizontal and vertical virtual contours during the sweeping operations;

determining from the horizontal and vertical virtual contours a sweep path of the directional light source;

searching the sweep path for overlapping points to generate a virtual grid;

simultaneously capturing by at least one optical device data for a plurality of points on the virtual grid by performing the sweeping operations into a field of view of an optical device; and

calibrating a location and orientation of the light source relative to the optical device using the captured data for the plurality of points.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the sweeping operations include a series of vertical and horizontal sweeping operations performed in a predetermined manner to generate the virtual grid.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the horizontal and vertical contours include a plurality of line segments between points of intersection between the vertical and horizontal virtual counters.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein a sweeping operation is performed at a speed that is less than an exposure time of the optical device.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein a sweeping operation is performed in coordination with a frame capture in the field of view of the optical device.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the directional light source generates captured light that radiates at a level that provides a measurable change compared to ambient lighting along a sweep path.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein producing the horizontal contour includes a horizontal sweep where a pan is variable and a tilt is fixed and producing the vertical contour includes a vertical sweep where the pan is fixed and the tilt is variable.

8 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing an image processing operation comprising:

capturing two images, wherein a first image is captured from the sweeps and the second image is captured in the absence of an application of the directional light source;

executing a background subtraction operation using the two captured images;

filtering the resulting image for noise;

performing a contour estimation operation; and

performing an edge detection operation.