A self-calibrating phase-shifting algorithm based on the natural demodulation of two-dimensional fringe patterns

A new method of estimating the phase-shift between interferograms is introd uced. The method is based on a recently introduced two-dimensional Fourier- Hilbert demodulation technique. Three or more interferogram frames in an ar bitrary sequence are required. The first stage of the algorithm calculates frame differences to remove the fringe pattern offset; allowing increased f ringe modulation. The second stage is spatial demodulation to estimate the analytic image for each frame difference. The third stage robustly estimate s the inter-frame phase-shifts and then uses the generalised phase-shifting algorithm of Lai and Yatagai to extract the offset, the modulation and the phase exactly. Initial simulations of the method indicate that high accura cy phase estimates are obtainable even in the presence of closed or discont inuous fringe patterns. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.