3D shape measurement based on projection of triangular patterns of two selected frequencies

In this paper, a temporal shift unwrapping technique is presented for solving the problem of shift wrapping associated with spatial shift estimation (SSE)-based fringe pattern profilometry (FPP). Based on this technique, a novel 3D shape measurement method is proposed, where triangular patterns of two different spatial frequencies are projected. The patterns of the higher frequency are used to implement the FPP, and the one with lower frequency is utilized to achieve shift unwrapping. The proposed method is able to solve the shift unwrapping problem associated with the existing multi-step triangular pattern FPP by projection of an additional fringe pattern. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experimental results, where the same accuracy as existing multi-step triangular pattern FPP can be achieved, but enabling the measurement of objects with complex surface shape and high steps. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America