<title>Measurement of displacement vector fields based on high-precision phase measurement</title>

Abstract

Because in interferometry the phase is the primary quantity to be measured the main interest during the last ten years was focused on the development of high precision phase reconstruction techniques. Although the measurement of the other quantities to be measured, as for instance the 3 coordinates of the object points, can be reduced to a phase measurement from the practical point of view three strongly connected tasks have to be solved for the measurement of vector displacement fields: interferometer design, data acquisition, and data evaluation. This paper deals with the discussion of the theoretical background of these three procedures concerning the topical state of the art and tries to derive some general rules as well as some problems remaining to be solved for the investigation of extended specimens.