Ultrafast 3-D shape measurement with an off-the-shelf DLP projector

This paper presents a technique that reaches 3-D shape measurement speed beyond the digital-light-processing (DLP) projector's projection speed. In particular, a solid-state binary structured pattern is generated with each micro-mirror pixel always being at one status (ON or OFF). By this means, any time segment of projection can represent the whole signal, thus the exposure time can be shorter than the projection time. A sinusoidal fringe pattern is generated by properly defocusing a binary one, and the Fourier fringe analysis means is used for 3-D shape recovery. We have successfully reached 4,000 Hz rate (80 mu s exposure time) 3-D shape measurement speed with an off-the-shelf DLP projector. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America