Demodulation of a single interferogram based on continuous wavelet transform and phase derivative

A novel method based on continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and guidance of phase derivative is developed to measure the phase of a single fringe pattern which contains closed fringes. Wrapped phase values are retrieved by ridge extraction algorithms based on CWT which has the capability of better noise reduction and thus increases the resolution of measurement significantly. To further reduce the noise, the scales detected by maximum ridge algorithm are filtered iteratively before retrieval of wrapped phase. The proposed method also identifies any ambiguous point in a non-monotonous fringe pattern by directly tracking an inflexion point from an unwrapped phase map without the use of a carrier. The algorithm developed is validated by computer simulation and experimental results. Based on micro interferometry the experimental results for both static and dynamic deformations of a micro structure demonstrate that the proposed method is an effective tool for the analysis of closed fringe patterns and subsequent deformation measurement. However, the proposed technique is limited to measurement of surface which is relatively smooth compared to the mean wavelength of the light source. In addition, prior knowledge of the sign of surface slope is required in cases where a spatial carrier is not available or adaptable. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.