1. A system for measuring a distance to a surface along a longitudinal direction of said surface using an acquisition instrument while compensating for variations in a transverse position of the acquisition instrument, said surface having a longitudinally-aligned feature, said system comprising: an acquisition instrument including a multipoint range sensor acquiring said distance between said acquisition instrument and said surface, said multipoint range sensor acquiring said distance in a field of view of said acquisition instrument at a multitude of transversal points, thereby acquiring a distance set, said field of view having a transversal dimension and a longitudinal dimension along said longitudinal direction of said surface, said transversal dimension being longer than said longitudinal dimension; a translation mechanism for displacing said acquisition instrument to allow said acquisition instrument to acquire said distance set at a plurality of positions along said longitudinal direction; a processor for: retrieving a position of said longitudinally-aligned feature of the surface relative to the field of view of the acquisition instrument; retrieving a predetermined transversal distance from said longitudinally-aligned feature at which to extract a relevant distance from said distance set; extracting a range point in said distance set at said predetermined transversal distance from said position of said longitudinally-aligned feature; adding the extracted range point to generate a longitudinal distance set at a constant transversal distance from said longitudinal feature.