Quantitative appraisal for noise reduction in digital holographic phase imaging

This paper discusses on a quantitative comparison of the performances of different advanced algorithms for phase data de-noising. In order to quantify the performances, several criteria are proposed: the gain in the signal-to-noise ratio, the Q index, the standard deviation of the phase error, and the signal to distortion ratio. The proposed methodology to investigate de-noising algorithms is based on the use of a realistic simulation of noise-corrupted phase data. A database including 25 fringe patterns divided into 5 patterns and 5 different signal-to-noise ratios was generated to evaluate the selected de-noising algorithms. A total of 34 algorithms divided into different families were evaluated. Quantitative appraisal leads to ranking within the considered criteria. A fairly good correlation between the signal-to-noise ratio gain and the quality index has been observed. There exists an anti-correlation between the phase error and the quality index which indicates that the phase errors are mainly structural distortions in the fringe pattern. Experimental results are thoroughly discussed in the paper.