A surface scanner has been developed which records the light from an approximately flat surface at up to sixteen different angles. The scanner simultaneously records images of the surface as an illuminated spot is traversed across the surface. The optical design of the scanner allows the use of just one parabolic mirror slightly larger than the scan length required, and small detectors for the reflected/scattered light at each angle. Design principles for the scanner are developed and some resulting images on surfaces presented. The data from the above scanner is used to compute the surface topology of a surface by integrating the surface slope measurements obtained from the multi-angle data. This is accomplished by obtaining an estimation of surface slope at each pixel position. Constraints are then imposed on the data to obtain a continuous three-dimensional surface. The surface obtained is compared with data obtained from the surface by measuring with a “Talysurf” stylus measurement machine. To do this a common coordinate frame is needed requiring a rotation and scaling in two directions of one of the data sets to obtain maximum cross-correlation between the three dimensional profiles.