Phase extraction from arbitrary phase-shifted fringe patterns with noise suppression

Extracting phase distribution from arbitrary phase-shifted fringe patterns, if possible, is very useful in phase-shifting interferometry. The advanced iterative algorithm (AIA) is introduced and the windowed Fourier ridges and least squares fitting (WFRLSF) is proposed. Both algorithms are sensitive to noise, which limits their applications to almost perfect fringe patterns. The windowed Fourier filtering (WFF) algorithm is proposed for both pre-filtering and post-filtering to suppress the noise. Simulation results show that with the effective noise suppression, the phase error is reduced to less than 0.1 rad. Experimental examples are also given for verification. The almost identical results produced by the AIA and the WFRLSF suggest that both algorithms can be used for phase extraction with cross-validation.