High-speed 3D shape measurement with structured light methods: A review

High-speed 3D shape measurement (or imaging) has seen tremendous growths over the past decades, especially the past few years due to the improved speed of computing devices and reduced costs of hardware components. 3D shape measurement technologies have started penetrating more into our daily lives than ever before with the recent release of iPhone X that has an built-in 3D sensor for Face ID, along with prior commercial success of inexpensive commercial sensors (e.g., Microsoft Kinect). This paper overviews the primary state-of-the-art 3D shape measurement techniques based on structured light methods, especially those that could achieve high measurement speed and accuracy. The fundamental principles behind those technologies will be elucidated, experimental results will be presented to demonstrate capabilities and/or limitations for those popular techniques, and finally present our perspectives on those remaining challenges to be conquered to make advanced 3D shape measurement techniques ubiquitous.