Recent Advances in 3D Shape Measurement and Imaging Using Fringe Projection Technique

Three-dimensional (3D) shape measurement and imaging technique, for determining the 3D shape of objects, has emerged as an important tool for many applications, such as object detection, digital model generation, object replication, reverse engineering, rapid prototyping, product inspection, quality control, etc. As technologies evolve, there have been high demands for the 3D shape measurement techniques to posses the following combined technical features: high accuracy, fast speed, easy implementation, capability of measuring multiple objects, and capacity of measuring complex shapes. In this paper, the authors have performed a thorough literature survey on the 3D shape measurement and imaging work published in recent years. Generally, the existing techniques can satisfy some of the requirements, but not all of them. Due to the superior measurement capabilities, it has been identified that the fringe projection profilometry (FPP) based techniques have become the most widely used techniques for 3D imaging and shape measurements in academia and industry. Recent advance techniques in this field, including gamma correction of digital projection, arbitrary setup of system components, phase unwrapping with multi-frequency fringes, and system calibration with a least-squares inverse approach, are reported in this paper. The presented techniques have been verified by experiments and proved to be capable of satisfying the various critical demands in enormous scientific and engineering applications.