Enhanced reference-plane-based dual-frequency absolute phase retrieval for depth measurement

Abstract

Digital fringe projection is one of the most widely adopted optical non-contact methods used for high-precision depth measurement in industry. Nevertheless, new approaches with less measurement complexity and higher accuracy are still emerging in the research field. In this paper, we first analyze the efficiency of the reference-plane-based dual-frequency (RDF) pixel-by-pixel absolute phase retrieval method. The RDF method is able to provide a high-precision phase measurement, but the constraint of measurement depth range limits its application. We therefore propose an enhanced reference-plane-based dual-frequency (ERDF) pixel-by-pixel absolute phase retrieval method. The proposed ERDF method overcomes the constraint of measurement depth range and preserves the merits of the RDF method. In the ERDF method, the lower-frequency phase map is completely unwrapped with reference-plane-based single-frequency method, and the higher-frequency phase map is completely unwrapped using the lower-frequency unwrapped phase. The ERDF method is suitable for measuring objects with step-height surface discontinuities. Experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed ERDF method as compared to the RDF method.