When used in conjunction with photogrammetry--a technique for establishing spatial coordinates using visual reference points, shown in the left photo--laser scanning can be used on large objects such as airplanes, sailboats--and fusion reactors.

A team of metrologists scanned the plasma containment chamber, or stellarator (as in, "this thing works like a star"), that uses magnetic fields to confine the super-hot plasma within the reactor at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab in sections, then stitched more than 20 of them together in a seamless mosaic. The scans were accurate to 50 microns; the false color in the right image indicates how much the stellarator deviates from its ideal shape.