Real-time three-dimensional shape measurement is becoming increasingly important in various fields, including medical sciences, high-technology industry, and microscale measurements. However, there are not so many 3D profile tools specially designed for specifically narrow space, for example, to scan the tooth shape of a human jaw. In this paper, a real-time 3D intraoral scanner is proposed for the measurement of tooth profile in the mouth cavity. The proposed system comprises a laser diode beam, a micro charge-coupled device, a graticule, a piezoelectric transducer, a set of optical lenses, and a polhemus device sensor. The phase-shifting technique is used along with an accurate calibration method for the measurement of the tooth profile. Experimental and theoretical inspection of the phase-to-coordinate relation is presented. In addition, a nonlinear system model is developed for collimating illumination that gives the more accurate mathematical representation of the system, thus improves the shape measurement accuracy. Experiment results are presented to verify the feasibility and performance of the developed system. The experimental results indicate that overall measurement error accuracy can be controlled within 0.4 mm with a variability of ${pm}0.01$.