Phase recovery from a single fringe pattern using an orientational vector-field-regularized estimator

Recent studies have demonstrated that the phase recovery from a single fringe pattern with closed fringes can be properly performed if the modulo 2 pi fringe orientation is estimated. For example, the fringe pattern in quadrature can be efficiently obtained in terms of the orientational phase spatial operator using fast Fourier transformations and a spiral phase spectral operator in the Fourier space. The computation of the modulo 2 pi fringe orientation, however, is by far the most difficult task in the global process of phase recovery. For this reason we propose the demodulation of fringe patterns with closed fringes through the computation of the modulo 2 pi fringe orientation using an orientational vector-field-regularized estimator. As we will show, the phase recovery from a single pattern can be performed in an efficient manner using this estimator, provided that it requires one to solve locally in the fringe pattern a simple linear system to optimize a regularized cost function. We present simulated and real experiments applying the proposed methodology. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.