Spatiotemporal phase unwrapping for the measurement of discontinuous objects in dynamic fringe-projection phase-shifting profilometry

A spatiotemporal phase-unwrapping method is presented that combines the dynamic fringe-projection method and the phase-shifting technique and extends the phase-unwrapping method, which measures two phase maps at different sensitivities. The most important feature of the method is that it makes possible the automatic three-dimensional shape measurement of discontinuous objects with large dynamic range limits and high precision because the effective wavelength of the fringe-projection profilometry can be continuously varied over several orders of magnitude by rotation of the projection grating in its own plane. Only one grating and several steps of rotating the grating are required; therefore the method is inherently simple, fast, and robust. In the experiment, choosing the rotation angle was crucial for optimizing the measurement speed and the measurement accuracy. A criterion is presented for the choice of the minimum number of rotational steps for a given accuracy. The experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 120.2650, 120.3180, 120.3940, 120.4630, 120.4640, 120.5050.