Specular surface measurement by using least squares light tracking technique

This paper presents a novel technique for measuring the three-dimensional (3-D) shapes of specular surfaces. In this technique, an LCD monitor plane is used as the diffusive light source. It can be vertically moved to two or more different positions. At each position, sinusoid fringe patterns are displayed on the LCD plane and reflected by the measured specular surface. The distorted fringe patterns are captured with a camera, so that the phase distributions at these positions are measured. From the phases, the locus of the incident ray for each pixel is determined in the least squares sense, and further the three-dimensional shape of the specular surface is reconstructed. In so doing, the restrictions and limitations of the existing techniques in computational complexities, phase ambiguities, and error accumulations are eliminated. The validity of this technique has been demonstrated by experimental results.