Absolute phase estimation: adaptive local denoising and global unwrapping

The paper attacks absolute phase estimation with a two-step approach: the first step applies an adaptive local denoising scheme to the modulo-2[pi] noisy phase; the second step applies a robust phase unwrapping algorithm to the denoised modulo-2[pi] phase obtained in the first step. The adaptive local modulo-2[pi] phase denoising is a new algorithm based on local polynomial approximations. The zero-order and the first-order approximations of the phase are calculated in sliding windows of varying size. The zero-order approximation is used for pointwise adaptive window size selection, whereas the first-order approximation is used to filter the phase in the obtained windows. For phase unwrapping, we apply the recently introduced robust (in the sense of discontinuity preserving) PUMA unwrapping algorithm [IEEE Trans. Image Process. 16, 698 (2007)] to the denoised wrapped phase. Simulations give evidence that the proposed algorithm yields state-of-the-art performance, enabling strong noise attenuation while preserving image details. OCIS codes: 100.5088, 110.5086, 280.0280.