The structured light consists on the projection of a known pattern over the scene to reconstruct. Most part of the project patterns are based on vertical lines, in that case the COP population consists filling each COPs column with the metric coordinates of each pattern line. So, the generated COP will contain the same rows as the acquired image and as many columns of projected lines over the surface.

Population of a COP from Structured Light

In case of projection of several patterns over the image, the resulting COP will contain as many columns as the total number of lines projected over the scene.

This way of population assures neighbourhood between points, so, triangles can be computed. This could be observed on the following figure, despite the low resolution of the reconstruction (only 8 lines are used), the solid view displays a continuous surface. If more resolution is required, some kind of interpolation could be used to get data between lines.

3D View of a sample generated COP