CHANNEL CAPACITY MODEL OF BINARY ENCODED STRUCTURED LIGHT-STRIPE ILLUMINATION

A common approach to structured Light-illumination measurement is to e ncode a surface topology successively with binary light-stripe pattern s of variable spatial frequency. Each surface location is thereby enco ded with a binary sequence associated with its height. By analyzing th e lateral displacements of the reflected encoded pattern, one can reco nstruct the surface topology without ambiguity. We present a model for multistripe analysis in terms of an information channel for which the maximum spatial stripe frequency is related to channel capacity and m aximized accordingly by use of Shannon's theorems. The objective is to improve lateral resolution through optimized spatial frequency while maintaining a fixed range resolution. Given an optimized spatial frequ ency, a technique is presented to enhance lateral resolution further b y multiplexing the Light structure. Theoretical and numerical results are compared with experimental data. (C) 1998 Optical Society of Ameri ca.