3-D surface profile measurement using spectral interferometry based on continuous wavelet transform

This study proposes a signal analysis technique that uses continuous wavelet transform for signal processing in a spectral domain optical coherence tomography system. Our method enables us to calculate the optical path difference simply by taking advantage of the fact that the product of the phase and wavelength becomes constant. Experimental results obtained using a pair of gauge blocks with a thickness difference of 40 mu m confirm that the repetitive measurement accuracy was 65.1 nm. A demonstration of the three-dimensional surface profile measurement indicates that the rms measurement error is 0.17 mu m.