Parallel phase-shifting dual-illumination phase unwrapping

Abstract

We propose a single-shot phase unwrapping technique using a single wavelength and parallel phase-shifting interferometry. In the proposed technique, an object is illuminated by two laser beams, which are emitted from the same laser, and have different illumination angles and polarizations. Two types of object waves generated by the two beams are separately and simultaneously recorded by a polarization-imaging camera. In the path of the reference wave, an array of phase retarders is placed to implement the parallel phase-shifting technique. A highly accurate three-dimensional shape is reconstructed from a single hologram. We numerically simulated the proposed technique and conducted a preliminary experiment to verify its effectiveness. It was confirmed that millimeter-order height, which was several thousand times the wavelength of the laser, can be reconstructed by the proposed technique without wrapping.