A New Phase Unwrapping Algorithm Based on Relative Distance Oriented

Abstract

A relative distance‐oriented phase unwrapping algorithm is presented in this paper. Considered the wrapped phase value and modulation distribution of the neighboring pixel, a relative distance of two adjacent pixels is calculated and localized in a complex coordinates, in which the relative distance tree will be composed by all the relative distances and will be used to determine the optimized path of phase unwrapping. The smaller relative distance shows that the phase difference between the two corresponding pixels is very small and the phase data waiting for unwrapping is more reliable. The closer the relative distance is, the more success the phase unwrapping will achieve. Combining the minimum spanning tree algorithm, the phase unwrapping order of each pixel can be determined and the whole phase unwrapping path can also be given. The phase unwrapping path is always directed from the minimum distance value to the greater one. Consequently, this algorithm could avoid error propagating in the phase unwrapping. The errors could be limited in the minimum local region in worst case and the error probability of the phase unwrapping is as low as possible. The physical significance of the relative distance and the fully algorithm for phase unwrapping are proposed in this paper. The result of the experiment show that this new algorithm is feasible and effective, it could control the path avoid crossing the poles, branch‐cut and the shadow in the phase unwrapping.