Simplified absolute phase retrieval of dual-frequency fringe patterns in fringe projection profilometry

Abstract In fringe projection profilometry, a simplified method is proposed to recover absolute phase maps of two-frequency fringe patterns by using a unique mapping rule. The mapping rule is designed from the rounded phase values to the fringe order of each pixel. Absolute phase can be recovered by the fringe order maps. Unlike the existing techniques, where the lowest frequency of dual- or multiple-frequency fringe patterns must be single, the presented method breaks the limitation and simplifies the procedure of phase unwrapping. Additionally, due to many issues including ambient light, shadow, sharp edges, step height boundaries and surface reflectivity variations, a novel framework of automatically identifying and removing invalid phase values is also proposed. Simulations and experiments have been carried out to validate the performances of the proposed method.