Effect of digital fringe projection parameters on 3D reconstruction accuracy

Abstract

3D reconstruction has been already one of the most interesting research areas among photogrammetry and computer vision researchers. This thesis aims to evaluate digital fringe projection method in reconstruction of small objects with complicated shape. Digital fringe projection method is a novel method in structured light technique which integrates interferometric and triangulation methods. In this method, a digital projector projects a series of sinusoidal fringe patterns onto the object surface. Then, a camera from a different point of view captures images of patterns that are deformed due to object's surface topography. Afterward, the captured images will be processed and the depth related phase would be calculated. Due to using arctangent function in the process of phase extraction, the computed phase ranges from -pi to +pi, so a phase unwrapping step is necessary. Finally, the unwrapped phase map would be converted to depth map with some mathematical models. This method has many advantages like high speed, high accuracy, low cost hardware, high resolution (each pixel will have a depth at end), and simple computations. This paper aims to evaluate different parameters which affect the accuracy of the final results. For this purpose, some test were designed and implemented. These tests assess the number of phase shifts, spatial frequency of the fringe pattern, light condition, noise level of images, and the color and material of target objects on the quality of resulted phase map. The evaluation results demonstrate that digital fringe projection method is capable of obtaining depth map of complicated object with high accuracy. The contrast test results showed that this method is able to work under different ambient light condition; although at places with high light condition will not work properly. The results of implementation on different objects with various materials, color and shapes demonstrate the high capability of this method of 3D reconstruction.