Objective Linestructured light measurement technology is widely used in the field of industrial inspection. In the measurement system, the center extraction accuracy of the laser stripe directly influences the final measurement accuracy. Unfortunately, some factors in the industrial environment significantly affect the center extraction of the laser stripe. For example, the rounded convexity on the surface of a detected object leads to a large change in the curvature of the collected laser stripe, and the reflections on the surface of the detected object lead to a laser stripe connected with reflective noise, resulting in severe interference. In these situations, existing algorithms, such as the geometric center, gray gravity, and Steger algorithms, cannot obtain proper extraction results. In case of a large curvature change, existing algorithms fail to accurately extract the center of the laser stripe along its normal direction, resulting in a large deviation from the actual center. In the case of severe interference, existing algorithms fail to efficiently avoid interference disturbances; thus, the interference is calculated as part of the laser stripe. Therefore, it is necessary to implement countermeasures to solve these problems and improve the applicability of the center extraction algorithm .Conclusions This study proposes a centerextraction algorithm for linestructured light based on unilateral tracking and midpoint prediction, which proves that the proposed algorithm can deal with laser stripe under the conditions with large curvature change or serious interference and obtain proper results. In addition, the proposed algorithm is faster and more applicable than existing algorithms. These advantages enable the proposed algorithm to provide support for linestructured light measurements under nonideal conditions.