1. A laser digitizer comprising: a light source having collimating optics configured to generate a collimated beam of light; a scanner optically coupled to the light source and configured to scan the collimated beam along at least two axes towards an object to be imaged; an image capture instrument having an optical axis at an angle &thgr; with respect to the scanner and configured to detect a reflection of the scanned beam from the object and to generate data representative of a surface of the object based on the reflected beam; a processor coupled to the scanner and the image capture system configured to generate a three-dimensional image of the object based on the data.