Two-Digit Phase-Coding Strategy for Fringe Projection Profilometry

Phase-coding methods have been widely used for three-dimensional (3-D) shape measurement, which use sinusoidal phase-shifting patterns to recover wrapped phase and the stair phase-coding patterns to determine the fringe order. However, due to the system nonlinearity, random noises, and image blurring, the total number of codewords that can be used is limited. In order to increase the number of codewords, this article presents a two-digit phase-coding (TDPC) strategy, in which each fringe of the sinusoidal phase-shifting patterns corresponds to a two-digit codeword encoded in the phase-coding patterns. In this way, more codewords can be generated without increasing additional patterns. Experiments of the cup and sculptures have been carried out, and the results confirm that the TDPC method can recover the 3-D shape of objects more robustly. Meanwhile, the precision experiment of a standard ball proves the high accuracy of the proposed method.