HIGH-SPEED PHASE-SHIFT COMPUTATION USING DYNAMIC MEMORY PROCESSING

The conventional method of applying the arctangent operation at every picture element in an interferogram slows down the phase-shift techniq ue. A method that precalculates and dynamically stores the phase combi nations in the computer's random-access memory is introduced. The appr opriate value is then mapped out based on input phase-shifted intensit ies. Performance tests on different types of processors reveal a two t o seven times increase in computational speed using the method. (C) 19 96 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.