Reverse engineering (RE) has been used closely with rapid prototyping (RP) for fabricating one object from another. Existing RE-RP integrations all begin with the data acquisition of the entire surface of an object. This large point cloud data contains redundancy that must be reduced to avoid unnecessary difficulty in a subsequent surface reconstruction step. Rather than performing data reduction after capturing the data of an entire object, data are acquired selectively and locally layer by layer, based on the part complexity, to minimize the number of scans. The results of each scan are contour data points, which can be directly used to generate commands for fabricating a prototype.

Build time and accuracy are two contradicting issues that have been a major concern in rapid prototyping, and have led to the development of many slicing approaches, including those applying adaptive slicing, direct slicing, and adaptive direct slicing concepts. Applying image processing has become an interesting technique to determine appropriate thickness for each sliced layer in an adaptive direct slicing process and to recommend slicing positions on a 3D CAD model.

Structured light system is a non-contact measurement technique that has been developed based on an active triangulation method where a known pattern of light is projected onto an object. Using the SLS technique, features can be projected on an object surface to appear explicitly through phase distortion of the projected patterns. The deformed patterns are captured by a camera or some other image detection device with cheap and fast operation.