Radial Basis Functions for Phase Unwrapping

Abstract

Abstract. An important step in fringe pattern analysis is the so called phase unwrapping. Although this task can be performed easily using path dependent algorithms, most times, however, these algorithms are not robust enough specially in the presence of noise. On the other hand, path independent methods such as least-squares based or regularization based may be little convenient due to programming complexity or time consuming. In this paper we describe an alternative algorithm for phase unwrapping based in the determination of weights to linearly combine a set of radial basis functions (RBFs). As described, our algorithm is fast and can be easily implemented following a simple matrix formulation. Numerical and real experiments with good results show that our method can be applied in many kinds of optical tests.