Full-period fringe order correction method based on dual-threshold cellular automaton

Abstract

In traditional temporal phase unwrapping (TPU) methods, the fringe order is obtained pixel-to-pixel by multi-frequencies or multi-wavelengths. The direct calculation and error non-accumulation features accelerate the prosperity of TPU. Nevertheless, the noise, defocusing, and non-uniform reflectivity may inevitably lead to some fringe order errors. These errors are powerless against the evolving TPUs such as Gray code and phase coding. In this paper, a full-period fringe order correction method based on dual-threshold cellular automaton is proposed for machine 3D vision. Initially, an advanced dual-threshold cellular automaton algorithm is employed to extract both the strong and weak edges of the wrapped phase individually. Superior to conventional single-threshold edge detection methods, this approach effectively mitigates the edge breakage problem caused by significant height variations. Subsequently, the N-filled map, N-residue mask, and N-start points concepts are introduced to sequentially segment independent connected domains based on the tightly graphical coupling. In addition, by performing edge compensation in the same period, accurate fringe order correction can be achieved even if excessive edge points are identified, as long as the broken edges are effectively connected. The experimental results exhibit exceptional correction performance of the proposed method for intricate isolated objects, objects with non-uniform reflectivity, and dynamic scenes.