Double-pattern triangular pulse width modulation technique for high-accuracy high-speed 3D shape measurement

Using 1-bit binary patterns for three-dimensional (3D) shape measurement has been demonstrated as being advantageous over using 8-bit sinusoidal patterns in terms of achievable speeds. However, the phase quality generated by binary pattern(s) typically are not high if only a small number of phase-shifted patterns are used. This paper proposes a method to improve the phase quality by representing each pattern with the difference of two binary patterns: the first binary pattern is generated by triangular pulse width modulation (TPWM) technique, and the second being pi shifted from the first pattern that is also generated by TPWM technique. The phase is retrieved by applying a three-step phase-shifting algorithm to the difference patterns. Through optimizing the modulation frequency of the triangular carrier signal, we demonstrate that a high-quality phase can be generated for a wide range of fringe periods (e.g., from 18 to 1140 pixels) with only six binary patterns. Since only 1-bit binary patterns are required for 3D shape measurement, this paper will present a real-time 3D shape measurement system that can achieve 30 Hz. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America