An absolute phase to world coordinates method for the defocusing structured light shape measurement system

This paper proposes a flexible calibration method for the defocusing structured light three-dimensional (3D) imaging system. Neither a high accuracy translation stage nor the parameters of the projector is required. Therefore the method is more flexible in many practical applications. World coordinates for calibration are obtained based on the method of coordinates from known plane. The monotonic nonlinear relationships between the absolute phase and each world coordinate have been investigated. Different from other methods, in our method, the 3D shape is directly recovered by the absolute phase to world coordinates method. Experimental results show that, when polynomial curve fitting methods are used, the root-mean-squared (RMS) error for the flat plate reconstruction is less than 0.12 mm, and the measurement error of 3D points is less than −0.34%. Furthermore, when comparing the measurement results of our method with the method of coordinates from known plane based on camera calibration, the relative error is less than −0.05%. Therefore, camera calibration is considered as the major error source.