Search

Phase measurement techniques using a single-shot carrier fringe pattern play an important role in optical science and technology and have been widely used for various applications. In this paper, we focus on the comparative study of two major fringe analysis techniques, the sampling moire (SM) and the windowed Fourier transform (WFT). While SM converts a single-fringe pattern to multiple phase-shifted moire fringe patterns to extract the phase information in the spatial domain, WFT obtains the phase information in the windowed Fourier domain; thus, the two methods look entirely different. We evaluate the phase extraction errors of SM and windowed Fourier ridges (WFRs) as a typical WFT method for both linear and nonlinear phases with/without noise against the reference Fourier transform (FT) technique. For the simulated fringe patterns with linear or nonlinear phase and different random noise level, all the methods have high phase extraction accuracies. For a real experiment with more complicated phase and discontinuities, SM and WFR, both local methods, yield quite similar results and outperform FT.

Accurately extracting phase or phase derivative is the most important requirement in optical metrology. However, in practice, there are many error sources, among which nonlinear distortion in fringe patterns is often encountered. Several techniques have been proposed over time to remove the nonlinearity error. Among these techniques, the windowed Fourier ridges (WFR) algorithm has been shown to be an effective solution insensitive to nonlinearity, but it lacks a theoretical justification. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the local frequency estimation error and phase extraction error, which not only proves the mentioned insensitivity, but also supports the performance prediction and error control, and thus is very important and useful in optical measurement. The theoretical results have been verified by computer simulations. Other error sources such as model error and noise are also compared and discussed.

Phase shifting profilometry (PSP) using binary fringe patterns with projector defocusing is promising for high-speed 3D shape measurement. To obtain a high-quality phase, the projector usually requires a high defocusing level, which leads to a drastic fall in fringe contrast. Due to its convenience and high speed, PSP using squared binary patterns with small phase shifting algorithms and slight defocusing is highly desirable. In this paper, the phase accuracies of the classical phase shifting algorithms are analyzed theoretically, and then compared using both simulation and experiment. We also adapt two algorithms for PSP using squared binary patterns, which include a Hilbert three-step PSP and a double three-step PSP. Both algorithms can increase phase accuracy, with the latter featuring additional invalid point detection. The adapted algorithms are also compared with the classical algorithms. Based on our analysis and comparison results, proper algorithm selection can be easily made according to the practical requirement.

To study dynamic behaviors of a phenomenon, measuring the evolving field of a specimen/material/structure is required. Optical interferometry, as a full-field, non-contact, and highly sensitive optical measurement technique, has been applied, where the evolving field is represented as dynamic phase distribution. A dynamic phase retrieval algorithm, called least-squares with 3 unknowns (LS3U), which estimates the phase change between each two consecutive patterns by a least-squares fitting method and denoises the phase change by a windowed Fourier filtering (WFF) algorithm, has been shown to be a simple yet effective algorithm. However, LS3U is computationally expensive, restricting its potential application in real-time dynamic phase retrieval systems. In this paper, a real-time LS3U algorithm powered by GPU parallel computing is proposed, with which frame rates of up to 64.5 frames per second (fps) and 131.8 fps are achieved on NVIDIA's GTX 680 and GTX 1080 graphics cards, respectively.

Fringe patterns produced by various optical interferometric techniques encode information such as shape, deformation, and refractive index. Noise affects further processing of the fringe patterns. Denoising is often needed before fringe pattern demodulation. Filtering along the fringe orientation is an effective option. Such filters include coherence enhancing diffusion, spin filtering with curve windows, second-order oriented partial-differential equations, and the regularized quadratic cost function for oriented fringe pattern filtering. These filters are analyzed to establish the relationships among them. Theoretical analysis shows that the four filters are largely equivalent to each other. Quantitative results are given on simulated fringe patterns to validate the theoretical analysis and to compare the performance of these filters.

A windowed Fourier filtered and quality guided (WFF-QG) phase unwrapping algorithm was proposed recently [Appl. Opt.47, 5420-5428 (2008)10.1364/AO.47.005420APOPAI0003-6935], based on the windowed Fourier transform [Appl. Opt.47, 5408-5419 (2008)APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.47.005408] where the phase is assumed to be locally quadric. We consider a locally higher order polynomial phase. After the phase is filtered and unwrapped by the WFF-QG, it is postprocessed by a congruence operation (CO), so that the unwrapped phase is congruent to the original wrapped phase. The unwrapped phase can now be assumed to be a locally high-order polynomial, and, consequently, least squares fitting (LSF) is proposed to suppress the noise. This postprocessing algorithm is abbreviated as CO-LSF. The CO-LSF is theoretically a reasonable choice to improve the WFF-QG results, especially when the noise is severe. This is because for severe noise, a large window is necessary for reliable phase extraction in the WFF-QG. However, this large window makes the quadric phase assumption less reasonable and leads to a large phase error. The CO-LSF thus helps to reduce the phase error by more reasonably assuming that the phase is a high-order polynomial. The polynomial order of 4 is suggested for the CO-LSF, as higher order polynomials do not give significant improvement to the WFF-QG. One disadvantage of the CO-LSF is that it is more sensitive to phase discontinuities than the WFF-QG.

Some effective filtering methods for wrapped phase maps, a regularized phase-tracking method (RPT) without the regularization term, a multiple-parameter least-square method (MPLS), a windowed Fourier ridges method (WFR), an autocorrelation function method (ACF), and a sine/cosine average filter (SCAF), are analyzed in order to establish their transversal relationship. The analysis shows that principles of the RPT, MPLS, WFR, and ACF are equivalent and the SCAF also leads to the WFR by some extension, which elegantly unifies all these methods for filtering unwrapped phase maps.

Quality-guided phase unwrapping (QGPU) has been proven as an effective phase unwrapping method. As the QGPU assumes that the true phase map is continuous, it suffers from the discontinuity problem. To solve this problem, the windowed Fourier transform (WFT) based methods have been adopted to obtain effective quality measures. Nevertheless, in some special cases, using the quality maps from the WFT-based methods could not lead to a correct result. In this paper, we propose a method that incorporates the GVF snake model to assist the unwrapping process. This new method achieves better results than using the WFT-based methods directly in some discontinuous examples.

Due to its effectiveness in fringe pattern analysis, a fast implementation of windowed Fourier transform (WFT)-based algorithms is desired. In this work, we speed up the implementation in two aspects. First, we speed up the computation of Fourier transform, which is a core component of the WFT-based algorithms. Second, we parallelize the main body of these algorithms due to its parallel characteristic. With these two approaches, we obtain a 10× faster implementation than the original MATLAB version.

Novel approaches based on windowed Fourier transform for demodulation of fringe patterns were previously presented [Appl. Opt. 43, 2695-2702 (2004)], where extraction of phase and phase derivatives from either phase-shifted fringe patterns or a single-carrier fringe pattern was the main focus. I show that the same methods can be applied to process a single closed-fringe pattern in either noise reduction or phase approximation, which adds to the versatility of the windowed Fourier-transform method for fringe pattern analysis.

A phase Ronchi grating-based real-time polarization phase-shifting method can be efficiently used for dynamic phase measurement in optical interferometry. A thorough error analysis is required for exhibiting how error sources influence phase-measurement results. We analyze the phase-measurement errors that are induced by the retardation error and azimuth angle error of the quarter-wave plate, the azimuth angle error of polarizers, the phase and intensity aberrations of diffractive wave fronts, and pixel mismatch of the interferometric patterns. The results will also be useful for evaluating the phase-measurement accuracy of other similar systems.

Quality-guided phase unwrapping (QGPU) is a widely used technique, and an adjoin list plays a very important role in the QGPU process. Indexed interwoven linked list (I2L2) is a data structure for implementing the adjoin list. In this paper, we propose three improvements on the I2L2. The first improvement is resumed searching, which records the highest nonempty level in the I2L2 and reduces the computational redundancy; the second is an adaptive mapping between the quality values and the I2L2 levels, which reduces the effect of concentrated quality value distribution. Last, I2L2-H, a new variant of the I2L2 combining the advantages of both the I2L2 and heap, is developed. With these three improvements, the improved I2L2 is over 6 times faster than the original one in the best cases, and it can process large phase maps in almost real time. Published version

Fringe patterns produced by various optical interferometric techniques encode information such as shape, deformation, and refractive index. Denoising and demodulation are two important procedures to retrieve information from a single closed fringe pattern. Various existing denoising and demodulation techniques require fringe direction/orientation during the processing. Fringe orientation is often easier to obtain but fringe direction is needed in some demodulation techniques. A quality-guided orientation unwrapping scheme is proposed to estimate direction from orientation. Two techniques, one based on windowed Fourier ridges and the other based on fringe gradient, are proposed for the quality-guided orientation unwrapping scheme. The direction qualities are compared for both simulated and experimental fringe patterns. Their application to demodulation technique is also given. Published version

Quality-guided phase unwrapping is a widely used technique with different quality definitions and guiding strategies reported. It is thus necessary to do a detailed comparison of these approaches to choose the optimal quality map and guiding strategy. For quality maps, in the presence of noise, transform-based methods are found to be the best choice. However in the presence of discontinuities, phase unwrapping is itself unresolved and hence quality-guided phase unwrapping is not sufficient. For guiding strategies, classical, two-section, and stack-chain guiding strategies are chosen for comparison. If accuracy is the foremost criterion then the classical guiding strategy with a data structure of indexed interwoven linked list is best. If speed is of essence then the stack-chain guiding strategy is the one to use.

A windowed Fourier ridges (WFR) algorithm and a windowed Fourier filtering (WFF) algorithm have been proposed for fringe pattern analysis and have been demonstrated to be versatile and effective. Theoretical analyses of their performances are of interest. Local frequency and phase extraction errors by the WFR and WFF algorithms are analyzed in this paper. Effectiveness of the WFR and WFF algorithms will thus be theoretically proven. Consider four phase-shifted fringe patterns with local quadric phase [c(20)=c(02)=0.005 rad/(pixel)(2)], and assume that the noise in these fringe patterns have mean values of zero and standard deviations the same as the fringe amplitude. If the phase is directly obtained using the four-step phase-shifting algorithm, the phase error has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 0.7 rad. However, when using the WFR algorithm with a window size of sigma(x)=sigma(y)=10 pixels, the local frequency extraction error has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of less than 0.01 rad/pixel and the phase extraction error in the WFR algorithm has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of about 0.02 rad. When using the WFF algorithm with the same window size, the phase extraction error has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of less than 0.04 rad and the local frequency extraction error also has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of less than 0.01 rad/pixel. Thus, an unbiased estimation with very low standard deviation is achievable for local frequencies and phase distributions through windowed Fourier transforms. Algorithms applied to different fringe patterns, different noise models, and different dimensions are discussed. The theoretical analyses are verified by numerical simulations.

Fringe patterns in optical metrology systems need to be demodulated to yield the desired parameters. Time-frequency analysis is a useful concept for fringe demodulation, and a windowed Fourier transform is chosen for the determination of phase and phase derivative. Two approaches are developed: the first is based on the concept of filtering the fringe patterns, and the second is based on the best match between the fringe pattern and computer-generated windowed exponential elements. I focus on the extraction of phase and phase derivatives from either phase-shifted fringe patterns or a single carrier fringe pattern. Principles as well as examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Moire interferometry is an effective experimental technique for measurement of in-plane deformation. However, it is information on the derivatives of the deformation, i.e., strains, that is usually desired in experimental mechanics. It is shown that the desired strains are the instantaneous frequencies of the fringe pattern and that either an energy operator or wavelet ridges can be used to extract the instantaneous frequencies from a single fringe pattern. The energy operator is a pixelwise processor; thus the strain extraction can be done on the fly, but it is sensitive to noise. The wavelet ridges extract the local features in the fringe pattern. The strain extraction is thus insensitive to noise, and good results are obtainable at the cost of longer computation time. The two methods can thus be chosen for different needs in strain analysis. The properties of the two methods as well as their applications to a real fringe pattern are given. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is illustrated by their comparison with traditional methods.