A novel algorithm based on histogram processing of reliability for two-dimensional phase unwrapping

A fast approach for two-dimensional phase unwrapping is presented. Reliability functions with fixed value range are defined for pixels and edges. Through histogram statistics for reliability values of edges, all edges are allocated to the corresponding subintervals of histogram. The proposed algorithm unwraps the phase subinterval by subinterval and for each subinterval edge by edge. A number of simulated and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm reacts satisfactorily to random noise and discontinuities in the wrapped phase distribution. The execution time of this algorithm is less than 60 ms for an image size of 800 × 800 pixels on a PC system generally. This algorithm can achieve quasi-real-time performance.