Heterodyne imaging speckle interferometer

A heterodyne imaging speckle interferometer coupled with lithium niobate is developed for whole field dynamic deformation imaging. In this device, the carrier frequency is introduced by the dual-transverse linear electro-optic effect. It is electrically controlled within a large range, which is twice the angular velocity of the driving alternating electric fields. By setting the angular velocity, the carrier frequency can fit most of area-array detectors, making it feasible to achieve whole field real time imaging. By using temporal evolution of the light intensity in heterodyne interferometry, the temporal intensity analysis method is employed to extract the deformation at each pixel dynamically. The principle and system configuration are described. The preliminary experiment is conducted with a cantilever beam and the results are compared with theoretical simulations to validate the proposed approach. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.