Phase unwrapping through demodulation by use of the regularized phase-tracking technique

Most interferogram demodulation techniques give the detected phase wrapped owing to the arctangent function involved in the final step of the demodulation process. To obtain a continuous detected phase, an unwrapping process must be performed. Here we propose a phase-unwrapping technique based on a regularized phase-tracking (RPT) system. Phase unwrapping is achieved in two steps. First, we obtain two phase-shifted fringe patterns from the demodulated wrapped phase (the sine and the cosine), then demodulate them by using the RPT technique. In the RPT technique the unwrapping process is achieved simultaneously with the demodulation process so that the final goal of unwrapping is therefore achieved. The RPT method for unwrapping the phase is compared with the technique of least-squares integration of wrapped phase differences to outline the substantial noise robustness of the RPT technique. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America.