Wide area imaging devices offer many speed and flexibility advantages to NDE applications. They can be reconfigured quickly to accommodate a variety of part geometries and sizes and can be deployed without precise fixturing for the sensor or the part. When the part to be inspected is large or complicated (with many bends); applications use several sensors or move a single sensor to multiple viewpoints to complete an inspection. An operator must then review several images for a single part, spatially relate indications across disparate images, and assume the collection of images completely covers the part. We describe a system that uses laser‐ultrasound as a wide area, imaging device. The system also uses a structured light range camera — typically used to measure shape — to locate the part in the work cell. We describe how camera calibration, photogrammetry, triangulation, and registration techniques are used to define coordinate frames that allow us to relate the data from the laser‐ultrasound imaging device to a CAD model of the part. We then map the ultrasound data from various viewpoints onto the CAD model, creating a natural 3D coordinate frame for the operator to relate indications and evaluate scan coverage. © 2003 American Institute of Physics