Generalized phase evaluation for stereophotogrammetric correspondence assignment

Phase-shifting fringe projection is the primary structured illumination method for high-accuracy, three-dimensional (3D) shape measurements in the fields of profilometry and stereophotogrammetry. Many different schemes for the phase evaluation and the phase-shifted fringe pattern design exist. Here we focus on the role of the phase evaluation in the context of stereophotogrammetry, where the nominal phase value itself is merely used as an image feature that can be exploited to establish a correspondence between the two camera views. Starting from the classical phase evaluation function, we will discuss its essential properties for a highly accurate correspondence mapping. Based on the findings, we generalize the classical function to derive a generalized phase value for a sequence of stereo images. An experimental comparison between a correspondence assignment using the classical phase evaluation function and a specifically chosen general phase evaluation function is given.