A Robust and Simple Measure for Quality-Guided 2D Phase Unwrapping Algorithms

Quality-based 2D phase unwrapping algorithms provide one of the best tradeoffs between speed and quality of results. Their robustness depends on a quality map, which is used to build a path that visits the most reliable pixels first. Unwrapping then proceeds along this path, delaying unwrapping of noisy and inconsistent areas until the end, so that the unwrapping errors remain local. We propose a novel quality measure that is consistent, technically sound, effective, fast to compute, and immune to the presence of a carrier signal. The new measure combines the benefits of both the quality-guided and the residue-based phase unwrapping approaches. The quality map is justified from the two different theoretical points of view. Exhaustive tests on a variety of artificially generated and real 2D wrapped phase signals illustrate its potential usefulness in the field of fringe projection profilometry.