ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,372,766, issued on July 29, was assigned to BST GmbH (Bielefeld, Germany).
"Device for acquiring images of a surface" was invented by Frank Bottcher (Verl, Germany), Peter Greve (Belm, Germany), Stefan Meinhardt (Bielefeld, Germany) and Klaus Reckefuss (Leopoldshohe, Germany).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The invention relates to a device for acquiring images of a surface (12) with different spatial resolution, the device including a camera (16) having an optical system (18) that can be focused onto the surface, a mechanical system (20) which is designed to vary the distance between the camera (16) and the surface (12) and wherein the op...