Electronic holography is a well-established technique used in real-time, non-contact, whole-field displacement measurements. When using the real-time, time-averaged method for vibration measurments, the quantitative interpretation of dense fringe patterns is difficult because of speckle noise. Even when speckle-reducing procedures are used, such as multiple-frame averaging or rotation of the illumination beam, the remaining speckles and decreasing visibility of higher-order Bessel fringes are serious limitations. The primary objective of this paper is to present a new realtime, interferometric method for mechanical vibration measurements and the associated quantitative interpretation. The fringe pattern obtained by this method is quasi-binary and half as dense as in the time-averaged method. The method greatly improves the overall visibility (contrast, resolution) of vibration fringe patterns without any sacrifice in the real-time capabilities. Quantitative fringe interpretation is straightforward and based on binary fringe tracking. It allows quantitative measurements in situations where the time-averaged fringe processing fails.
