Fringe projection

Chen Lujie

An object surface profile can be obtained by many different ways. One of the techniques
is called fringe projection (see Figure 1), in which several phase-shifted fringe patterns,
as shown in Figure 2(a), are projected onto the object surface. The fringe patterns
recorded by a camera are deformed, as shown in Figure 2(b), because of the surface
height variation. An algorithm can be applied to analyze the fringe patterns and retrieve
a 3D surface profile distribution.

Figure 1. A typical experimental setup of fringe projection.

Figure 2. (a) One of the projected fringe patterns. (b) One of the recorded fringe
projections on a fist model.

The data-processing procedure of fringe projection is very similar to those of other

optical techniques, such as laser interferometry, moire, etc. It is composed of wrapped
phase extraction [1], phase unwrapping [2] and / or carrier phase removal [3]. You may
download the raw images from my homepage and use the UU program to obtain the 3D
surface profile of the fish model.

1. Run UU.

2. UU -> Batch -> Load (Load raw images into a batch.)

3. UU -> Metrology -> Phase shifting (Apply phase-shifting algorithm to extract a
wrapped phase map as shown in Figure 3(a).)

4. UU -> Metrology -> Quality-guided unwrapping -> Phase gradient variance (Apply the
phase-unwrapping algorithm to the wrapped phase map to obtain an unwrapped phase
map as shown in Figure 3(b). The unwrapped phase map contains two components:
surface height related phase component and carrier fringe related phase component.)

Figure 3. (a) Wrapped phase map and (b) unwrapped phase map.

5. UU -> Tool -> Fit -> Plane or Polynomial (Select a reference region, as in Figure 4(a), to
fit a plane or polynomial surface, which represents the carrier phase component, as
shown in Figure 4(b).)

Figure 4. (a) Select the outer region of the red rectangle to fit as the reference plan. The
criterion for selecting the fitting region is that it should contain a flat reference plan
without or with negligible object height related phase components. (b) The fitted 2nd-
order polynomial surface.

6. UU -> Tool -> Arithmetic -> Img1 – Img2 (Subtract the fitted plane or surface obtained
at step 5 from the unwrapped phase map obtained at step 4. Which image is Img1 and
which is Img2 is not important. The two variants only differ in their sign. The difference
image data is the surface height related phase component, as shown in Figure 5(a) )
7. UU -> Tool -> Filter -> Mean or Iterative mean (An optional step is to smooth the
resultant surface height distribution obtained at step 6.)

8. UU -> Tool -> Report -> Height map (Export the surface data to Fig program, which
renders the surface in 3D, as shown in Figure 5(b). The Fig program should be at the
same folder as UU.)

Figure 5. (a) The difference image that represents the surface height related phase
component. (b) The 3D surface profile rendered in Fig.

References:

[1] C. J. Morgan, Least-squares estimation in phase-measurement interferometry,

Optics Letters, 7, pp. 368-370. 1982.
[2] D. C. Ghiglia and D. Mark, Two-Dimensional Phase Unwrapping. New York: Wiley,
1998.
[3] L. Chen and C. Quan, Fringe projection profilometry with nonparallel illumination: A
least-squares approach, Optics Letters, 30, pp. 2101-2103, 2005.