Vol. 26, No.

17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22440

High-speed real-time 3D shape measurement

based on adaptive depth constraint
T IANYANG TAO, 1,2,3 Q IAN C HEN , 1,2,5 S HIJIE F ENG , 1,2,3 J IAMING
Q IAN , 1,2,3 YAN H U , 1,2,3 L EI H UANG , 4 AND C HAO Z UO 1,2,3,*
1 School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, No. 200
Xiaolingwei Street, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210094, China
2 Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Spectral Imaging & Intelligent Sense, Nanjing University of Science and
Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210094, China
3 Smart Computational Imaging (SCI) Laboratory, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing,
Jiangsu Province 210094, China
4 Brookhaven National Laboratory, NSLS II 50 Rutherford Drive, Upton, NY 11973-5000, USA
5 [email protected]
* [email protected]

Abstract: Stereo phase unwrapping (SPU) has been increasingly applied to high-speed real-time
fringe projection profilometry (FPP) because it can retrieve the absolute phase or matching points
in a stereo FPP system without projecting or acquiring additional fringe patterns. Based on a
pre-defined measurement volume, artificial maximum/minimum phase maps can be created solely
using geometric constraints of the FPP system, permitting phase unwrapping on a pixel-by-pixel
basis. However, when high-frequency fringes are used, the phase ambiguities will increase
which makes SPU unreliable. Several auxiliary techniques have been proposed to enhance the
robustness of SPU, but their flexibility still needs to be improved. In this paper, we proposed
an adaptive depth constraint (ADC) approach for high-speed real-time 3D shape measurement,
where the measurement depth volume for geometric constraints is adaptively updated according
to the current reconstructed geometry. By utilizing the spatio-temporal correlation of moving
objects under measurement, a customized and tighter depth constraint can be defined, which helps
enhance the robustness of SPU over a large measurement volume. Besides, two complementary
techniques, including simplified left-right consistency check and feedback mechanism based
on valid area, are introduced to further increase the robustness and flexibility of the ADC.
Experimental results demonstrate the success of our proposed SPU approach in recovering
absolute 3D geometries of both simple and complicated objects with only three phase-shifted
fringe images.

© 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

1. Introduction
Fringe projection profilometry (FPP), as a non-contact three-dimensional (3D) shape measurement
technique, has becoming more prevalently adopted in a variety of applications, including manu-
facturing, medical imaging, computer vision, education, bio-medicine, and virtual/augmented
reality (VR/AR) [1, 2]. Many mature instruments have been developed to measure static objects
based on FPP. Recently, with the rapid development of image sensors and digital projection
technology, it becomes possible to realize high-speed, real-time 3D shape measurement of
dynamic objects by using FPP [3]. Different from those techniques for applications with static
objects, the primary problem in this field is to recover the 3D information of moving objects or
dynamic scenes with high speed, accuracy, and reliability. To this end, much research has been
done targeting real-time, high-performance 3D shape measurement, and considerable progresses
have been made during the past few years [4, 6–8].
In high-speed, real-time 3D shape measurement based on FPP, the sinusoidal fringe pattern is

#336037 https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.022440
Journal © 2018 Received 27 Jun 2018; revised 2 Aug 2018; accepted 6 Aug 2018; published 16 Aug 2018
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22441

the most frequently used projection pattern because using the phase information has the merits
of robustness to sensor noise, surface reflectivity variations, and being able to achieve high
spatial and/or temporal resolutions. The phase of the fringe is usually retrieved by Fourier
transform algorithm [4, 9, 10] or phase-shifting algorithm [5, 6, 11]. Fourier transform algorithm
extracts the phase measurement from a single fringe image by applying a properly designed
bandpass filter in the frequency domain, while the phase-shifting algorithm uses a minimum
of three fringe images and offers much higher measurement accuracy. 3D shape measurement
methods using these two algorithms are referred as the Fourier transform profilometry (FTP)
and the phase-shifting profilometry (PSP), respectively. Both methods have the capability of
high-speed real-time measurement. This capability can be improved in the following two aspects:
(1) increasing the speed of hardware (projector and camera); (2) increasing the efficiency of
absolute phase retrieval (or matching point retrieval). The first aspect focuses on using projector
defocusing technique to generate the sinusoidal fringe patterns from binary ones so that the
projection speed can be increased to the maximum frame rates of the digital mirror device
(DMD), e.g. kHz [10, 12] or even tens of kHz [13, 14]. Then with the assistance of high-speed
camera, it is not difficult to reduce the motion artifacts between two adjacent captured frames.
The major concern in this aspect is to explore what kind of binary pattern is suitable for achieving
high-accuracy phase measurement with a slightly de-focused projector [15–19]. The second
aspect tends to retrieve absolute phase or search the matching points by using as few fringe
patterns as possible [14, 20–22, 30–42]. How to ensure the robustness of phase unwrapping with
reduced patterns is the essential problem in this aspect [5]. Besides these two aspects, removing
the motion artifacts and reducing the motion vulnerability of multi-shot PSP based on error
compensation algorithms have also attracted increasing attention recently [22–26]. In practical
applications, the above mentioned three aspects can be combined to improve the accuracy of
dynamic measurement for moving parts. In this work, we focus more on the second aspect and
want to enhance the robustness of absolute phase retrieval without requiring additional image
acquisition.
Temporal phase unwrapping (TPU) is the most popular technique to retrieve the absolute
phase map which may contain large discontinuities and isolated surfaces [27–29]. However,
TPU generally requires extra fringe/graycode patterns, which decreases the efficiency of 3D
measurement in high-speed, time-critical scenarios. To maximize the measurement efficiency
of PSP, Weise et al. [22] introduced a novel phase unwrapping method where the geometric
constraint between different views (two cameras and a projector) is used to retrieve the absolute
phase. This method is termed as the stereo phase unwrapping (SPU) in our paper. There are
no restrictions on the shape of the measured objects and no requirements of extra projection in
SPU. This could be hardly realized in any other conventional techniques, such as spatial/temporal
phase unwrapping techniques. It is well known that the low-frequency sinusoidal fringes have
less phase ambiguities, tending to make the phase unwrapping more reliable. However, on the
other hand, increasing the frequency of the fringe pattern is essential to achieve high-precision
3D shape reconstruction. Using conventional SPU is not enough to robustly eliminate phase
ambiguities when high-frequency fringes are used. In the works of Weise et al. [22] and Garcia
et al. [30], graph cut and loopy belief propagation (LBP) were employed as auxiliary means
to further correct the fringe orders errors after SPU when high-frequency fringes are used.
Digital image correlation (DIC) is a different spatial algorithm to enhance the robustness of
SPU due to the high spatial distinguishability of speckle patterns [31, 32]. Notni et al. [33] took
the limited measurement volume of FPP system into account, and as a result, they set a depth
volume to preclude some phase ambiguities before the process of SPU. However, since the high
density of the fringes used, graph cut algorithm is inevitable in order to obtain an error-free
result. The similar idea was also employed by Li et al. [34] where the fringe density is properly
selected to make sure that only few candidates fall within the pre-defined measurement volume.
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22442

According to Li’s work, a narrow depth range should be set to ensure the reliability of SPU when
high-frequency fringes are used. The idea in Notni and Li’s work is the so-called depth constraint.
Based on the depth constraint, Tao et al. [35] integrated the composite phase shifting scheme into
SPU. Reliable real-time 3D measurement result was obtained over a large measurement volume
at the cost of reducing the amplitude of the fringe. Liu and Kofman [36] also developed a 3D
shape measurement approach that uses high-frequency background modulation fringe patterns
generated based on the depth constraint. Song et al. [37] used the passive stereo matching method
to generate a coarse depth map of the measured scene, which then serves as the depth volume
for SPU to reconstruct a high-resolution depth map. Besides, the depth constraint has also been
applied to conventional monocular FPP system (consisting of only one camera and one projector)
to restrict the search range for possible fringe orders and rule out several false candidates in
TPU [14, 38–40]. Besides the depth constraint, Notni’s work [41] and Tao’s recent work [42]
suggest that SPU can also be further refined by optimizing the relative positions between the
projector and cameras.
From above discussion, we know that SPU is usually implemented accompanying some
complicated and time-consuming spatial domain processing algorithms, such as graph cut
[22, 30–33, 41] and DIC [31, 32]. However, in practical applications, these algorithms still need
to be simplified in order to realize better real-time performance. On the other hand, the depth
constraint is an effective approach to improve the performance of SPU and has been extensively
used in combination with other phase retrieval approaches in many recent work [14, 33–42]. The
key problem in the depth constraint is how to set a suitable depth range. When a fixed depth
range is used, there is an inherent trade-off between the measurement range and the robustness of
the phase unwrapping. To guarantee the robustness of phase unwrapping, the fringe patterns
are usually designed with a relatively low frequency, resulting in a low measurement precision.
On the other hand, if high-frequency fringe patterns are used, the measurement range will be
significantly compromised as the object has to be placed within a very limited depth range.
To overcome the above mentioned limitations, we propose an adaptive depth constraint (ADC)
approach for high-speed real-time 3D shape measurement, where the measurement depth volume
for geometric constraints is adaptively updated according to the current reconstructed geometry.
During the real-time measurement process, we first analyze the statistical characteristics of the
raw depth map, and use the analysed results to update the global depth volume. Meanwhile, some
outliers can be filter out to obtain a refined depth map. Based on this refined depth map, then we
focus on the depth map of a neighborhood of each pixel and create a pixel-wise depth volume
map to be an input of the depth constraint in the next cycle of 3D measurement. Compared to the
conventional approaches based on fixed depth volume, the pixel-wise depth volume in our method
is more compact, adaptive to the object shape, and adaptively updated over time. That means our
method cannot only ensure the robustness of SPU but also have a wide measurement volume. To
make this adaptive depth constraint more flexible and robust, we develop two auxiliary techniques
including a simplified left-right consistency check and a feedback mechanism of valid depth area.
The simplified left-right consistency check tends to help ensure the reliability of raw depth map.
The feedback mechanism is used to deal with the case of the abrupt depth change, such as a
new object entering the field of view. All these techniques constitute the whole computational
framework for enhancing the robustness of SPU. The effectiveness and real-time performance of
this method are validated by several experiments.

2. Principle
In this section, we will focus on the basic principle of the proposed method. In Section 2.1,
we first introduce the framework and the inadequacy of SPU to more conveniently explain the
principle as well as the motivation of this work. Then we propose the core idea of our method
which is called ADC in Section 2.2. In the following Sections 2.3 and 2.4, the simplified left-right
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22443

consistency check and the feedback mechanism based on the valid area are detailed as two
complementary algorithms for ADC.

2.1. Basic principle of SPU

A typical FPP system using SPU is composed of two cameras and a projector. The fringe patterns
are projected onto the measured object by the projector, and then deformed by the object, and
finally captured by two cameras. A phase map is extracted from the deformed fringe patterns
to search the sub-pixel matching points and retrieving depth information. Taking three-step
phase-shifting fringe patterns for example, these fringe patterns captured by the cameras can be
expressed as the following formulae:

I1c (uc, v c ) = Ac (uc, v c ) + B c (uc, v c ) cos (Φc (uc, v c )) , (1)

 2π 
I2c (uc, v c ) = Ac (uc, v c ) + B c (uc, v c ) cos Φc (uc, v c )+ , (2)
3
 4π 
I3c (uc, v c ) = Ac (uc, v c ) + B c (uc, v c ) cos Φc (uc, v c )+ . (3)
3
Where superscript c denotes the camera, (uc, v c ) is an arbitrary point in camera c, I1c , I2c and I3c
correspond to the captured intensity maps, Ac is the average intensity map, B c is the amplitude
map while Φc the deformed absolute phase map. If the fringes are perpendicular to horizontal
axis of the projector, the horizontal coordinate of the matching point of (uc, v c ) can be determined
by
Φc (uc, v c )R
u p (uc, v c ) = , (4)
2N π
where R is the horizontal resolution of the projector, N is the period number of fringes. Then the
3D coordinates (X w, Y w, Z w ) of (uc, v c ) can be retrieved by

E cp (uc, v c )
Z w (uc, v c ) = D cp (uc, v c ) + , (5)
F cp (uc, v c )u p (uc, v c ) + 1

X w (uc, v c ) = G cp (uc, v c )Z(uc, v c ) + J cp (uc, v c ), (6)

Y w (uc, v c ) = L cp (uc, v c )Z(uc, v c ) + M cp (uc, v c ), (7)
where D cp , E cp , F cp , G cp , J cp ,
and L cp M cp
are the parameter matrices derived from
calibration parameters between the camera c and the projector p [20]. The process from Eqs. (5)
to (7) can also be implemented between two cameras, provided the matching point in another
camera is obtained. However, due to the inherent limitation of arctangent function, only the
wrapped phase φc (uc, v c ) can be obtained from Eqs. (1) - (3)
√ c c c
3[I1 (u , v ) − I3c (uc, v c )]
φ (u , v )= tan
c c c −1
. (8)
[2I2c (uc, v c ) − I1c (uc, v c ) − I3c (uc, v c )]

The relationship between φc (uc, v c ) and Φc (uc, v c ) satisfies

Φc (uc, v c )=φc (uc, v c )+2K c (uc, v c )π, K c (uc, v c ) ∈ [0, N − 1], (9)

where K c is the fringe orders. The essential problem of FPP is to find the correct K c , and this
process of exploring K c is the so-called phase unwrapping or elimination of phase ambiguities.
In SPU, the K c is retrieved with geometric constraint. To the best of our knowledge, it is first
used in Weise’s work [22]. Figure 1 displays the basic principle of SPU. oc1 is an arbitrary point
in the first camera (c1 ) with the coordinate (uc1 , v c1 ) and the wrapped phase φc1 (uc1 , v c1 ). For the
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22444

o w (oc1 , k )

u c1
v c1
oc1 u c2
up
Y c1 vp v c2 Y c2

X c1 X c2
c1
Z Z c2
Yp
Camera 1 Xp Camera 2
Zp Projector

Fig. 1. Diagram of SPU and conventional depth constraint (CDC).

sake of brevity, oc1 is used to substitute for (uc1 , v c1 ) in some expressions. We first sequentially
assign the integers within the interval [0, N − 1] to K c1 (oc1 ), and notate K c1 (oc1 ) assigned with
different values as K0c1 (oc1 ), K1c1 (oc1 ) ... Knc1 (oc1 ) ... K N
c1 c1 c1 c1
−1 (o ). Each Kn (o ) corresponds to a
 
Φc1 oc1 , Knc1 (oc1 ) according to Eq. (9) (Knc1 (oc1 ) will be simplified as Knc1 ). Then a total of N
3D points can be derived  from Eqs. (4) - (7), and the n-th 3D point is notated as ow (oc1 , Knc1 )
with the coordinate X w (oc1 , Knc1 ), Y w (oc1 , Knc1 ), Z w (oc1 , Knc1 ) . All these 3D points are called
the 3D candidates of oc1 , and the only 3D matching point is included in these candidates. The
blue lines from the projector in Fig. 1 denote part of the rays with the same wrapped phase
φc1 (oc1 ) but the different absolute phase Φc1 (oc1 , Knc1 ). These blue lines from the projector
and camera c1 intersect at different ow (oc1 , Knc1 ). The 3D candidates can be projected into the
second
 camera c2 to get its corresponding 2D candidates oc2 (oc1 , Knc1 ) with the coordinates
uc2 (oc1 , Knc1 ), v c2 (oc1 , Knc1 ) . There is also a 2D matching point within these 2D candidates. oc1
and its 2D matching point should have the similar properties, such as the phase, the texture and
so on. Keep this in mind, the 2D candidate with the closest wrapped phase to φc1 (oc1 ) is chosen
to be the matching point. Once the 2D matching point is determined, the fringe order of oc1 will
be known. This is the basic principle of SPU.
However, we must consider the effects of the discrete property of the camera, imperfect system
calibration and the noise in an actual experiment. All these effects will introduce errors to our
system and decrease the similarity between oc1 and its 2D matching point. On the other hand,
there may exist more than one 2D candidates having the similar phase to φc1 (uc1 , v c1 ) if the
high-frequency fringes are used. In this case, some matching errors will emerge during the
process of SPU. We can use a scheme called phase consistency check [42] to reject some 2D
candidates whose phase difference with φc1 (uc1 , v c1 ) is larger than a threshold. As shown in
Fig. 1, the 3D candidates corresponding to red lines from c2 are rejected while those candidates
corresponding to blue lines are reversed. Some additional techniques are required to distinguish
the matching point from the reserved candidates. Several kinds of techniques have been proposed,
and the review of these techniques can be seen in the introduction. Only the depth constraint
will be described in detail to explain both some basic principles and the initial motivation of our
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22445

method.

2.2. Adaptive depth constraint

At the beginning of this section, we will introduce the principle of CDC. Next, to resolve the
contradiction of CDC, we introduce the proposed methods including the global adaptive depth
constraint (GADC) and the pixel-wise adaptive depth constraint (PWADC).

2.2.1. Global adaptive depth constraint

Considering limitations of the depth of focus and the common field of view, the measurement

k +2
k +1
k
k -1
k -2
k -3

u c1
c1
v
oc1 u c2
up
Y c1 vp v c2 Y c2

X c1 X c2
Z c1 Z c2
Yp
Camera 1 Xp Camera 2
Zp Projector

Fig. 2. Diagram of the cross-section of Fig. 1

volume of FPP system must be restricted to a finite range. Different systems should have different
measurement volumes. But the theoretical measurement volume of a specific system is difficult
to determine, so it is always replaced by a larger experimental volume. The physical meanings of
Zmin and Zmax in Fig. 2 represent the minimum and maximum depth boundaries in the world
coordinate, respectively, and their units are mm. The volume between Zmin and Zmax is the
measurement volume. In CDC, the measurement volume usually serves as the depth volume. If
we can confirm that the measured object is located in the depth volume, we can use

Zmin ≤ Z w (oc1 , Knc1 ) ≤ Zmax (10)

to remove quite a number of candidates. As shown in Fig. 2, all the 3D candidates located
out of the depth volume are rejected, including ow (oc1 , k + 2) whose wrapped phase is similar
to φc1 (uc1 , v c1 ). That is the basic principle of CDC. However, the fringe density is usually
large enough, so there still exist more than one candidates with the similar wrapped phase to
φc1 (uc1 , v c1 ), such as ow (oc1 , k−2) and ow (oc1 , k). That means the robustness of SPU is still
not ensured. We can further narrow the depth volume until ow (oc1 , k−2) is rejected (assuming
ow (oc1 , k) is the matching point). But in this way, we can hardly guarantee that all the measurable
areas of the object are located in this narrow volume, especially when the object is moving.
In order to resolve the contradict between the measurement volume and robustness, we propose
a GADC technique. The main idea of this technique is to analyze the statistical properties of the
current depth map, and update a new depth volume for the next cycle of 3D measurement. In
GADC, note that the measurement volume [Zmin, Zmax ] will be independent of the depth volume
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22446

and remain constant. We first averagely divide the measurement volume (or initial depth volume)
[Zmin, Zmax ] into Q intervals, and the q-th interval is notated as [Zmin +q∆Z, Zmin +(q + 1)∆Z].
q is an integer and belongs to [0, Q − 1] while ∆Z= Zma xQ−Zmi n . H(q) is used to denote the number
of points in [Zmin +q∆Z, Zmin +(q + 1)∆Z]. We can easily obtain the histogram of the current
depth map by
 Z W (oC1 ) − Zmin   Z W (oC1 ) − Zmin 
H f loor( ) ⇐ H f loor( ) +1, (11)
∆Z ∆Z
 w c 
where f loor() represents rounding towards minus infinity, 0 ≤ f loor Z (o ∆Z)−Zmi n ≤ Q − 1.
1

As shown in Fig. 3, The green boundary of the object is the measurable surface, and the yellow
H min Number of points
Z min
H (q -j )
(Initial depth volume)
Measurement volume

global
Z min
Object H (q -3)
H (q -2)
Global adaptive H (q -1)
H (q)
depth volume H (q +1)
global H (q +2)
Z max

Histogram
H (q +i )

ZW
Z max

Fig. 3. Diagram of GADC for measuring single object

area is the depth histogram obtained according to Eq. (11). It can be found that the maximum
valid depth appears at H(q + i) while the minimum valid depth appears at H(q− j). Because of
the temporal continuity in real-time measurement, the depth difference between two adjacent
depth maps is small enough. That means the current depth distribution can serve as a reference
global global
to the next cycle of 3D measurement. The new depth volume is set as [Zmin , Zmax ], where
global global
Zmin = Zmin +(q − j)∆Z−∆Z motion , Zmax = Zmin +(q + i+1)∆Z+∆Z motion . ∆Z motion is
the allowance which is set for depth difference raised by object motion, and its unit is also
mm. The value of ∆Z motion depends on the capturing speed of the cameras. In most cases,
∆Z motion = 10mm is large enough. Considering the effect of outliers, a threshold Hmin (a, u) is
necessary to set the all depth intervals with H(q) > Hmin inactive. The value of Hmin depends on
the resolution of the cameras. For the 640 × 480 resolution, Hmin = 500 is acceptable. As shown
in histogram of Fig. 3, the purple dotted line represents Hmin , and these inactive depth intervals
are marked with red color while active depth intervals are represented by green rectangles. The
global
final boundaries of depth volume should be revised as Zmin = Zmin +(q − 2)∆Z−∆Z motion
global
and Zmax = Zmin +(q + 1+1)∆Z+∆Z motion . The blue area in Fig. 3 displays the new depth
volume. Based on this depth volume, the outliers in these inactive depth intervals H(q + i) and
H(q − j) will be correctly reconstructed. This is the process of GADC. Compared to CDC, the
proposed technique updates the initial depth volume from [Zmin, Zmax ] to a more compact depth
global global global global
volume [Zmin , Zmax ], which increases the robustness of SPU. Beside, [Zmin , Zmax ] is a
dynamic depth volume which is updated per cycle of measurement. That means the measurement
volume will be not restricted to a small depth volume, so there is no problem for this technique to
measure a moving object.
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22447

2.2.2. Pixel-wise adaptive depth constraint

The effectiveness of GADC depends on the updated depth volume while this depth volume is
determined by the object. Let us consider the case of measuring a large-size object or several
global global
isolated objects. In this case, the dynamic depth volume [Zmin , Zmax ] may not be so superior
to initial depth volume [Zmin, Zmax ], as shown in Fig. 4. Although the reconstructed errors in
H min Number of points
Z min
H (q -j )

(Initial depth volume)

global
Measurement volume
Z min
H (q -3)
Object1 H (q -2)
H (q -1)

Global adaptive
H (q)

depth volume
H (q +1)
H (q +2)

Histogram
H (q +i )

Object2
global H (Q-3)
Z max
Z max ZW

Fig. 4. Diagram of GADC for measuring two isolated objects

H(q − j) can still be corrected, more errors cannot be removed. The effectiveness of GADC will
decrease obviously. That is a result of only two depth boundaries being used. A more flexible
depth volume should be created to handle this case, and this is actually another technique called
PWADC that we will introduce in the next paragraph.
Just as its name implies, PWADC allocates each pixel with its own independent depth volume.
We will describe its principle based on Fig. 5. As shown in Fig. 5, the green point denotes
u c1
v c1
ZW
oc1
global
Z max

Object1
Object1
v c1
Object2
global
Z min

-20 4 5 6 7 global
Z max

1 3 4 5 7
Object2
2 3 4 6 8
3 4 5 7 9
global
Z min
3 5 6 8 10 u c1

Fig. 5. Diagram of PWADC for measuring two isolated objects

an arbitrary point oc1 in camera, and the red dotted rectangle is the 5 × 5 neighbourhood
around oc1 . Each small grey rectangle represents a pixel in this neighbourhood, and the green
rectangle is oc1 . The numbers in grey rectangles represent depth of the pixel. The maximum
pixel pixel
and minimum depth will be used as the boundaries of depth volume [Zmin (oc1 ), Zmax (oc1 )],
pixel pixel
where Zmin (oc1 )= − 20 − ∆Z motion , Zmax (oc1 )=10+∆Z motion . The depth difference raised
by motion is addressed from two aspects: (1) the pixel-wise depth volume is created based on a
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22448

neighbourhood instead of a single pixel; (2) the depth allowance ∆Z motion is added. Note that
there is an important step that should be implemented at the very start. That is we should use
global global
the global depth volume [Zmin + ∆Z motion, Zmax − ∆Z motion ] to set some outliers inactive.
Assuming the red rectangle in Fig. 5 is the inactive pixel, then the actual minimum boundary
pixel
of depth volume of oc1 should be Zmin (oc1 )=1 − ∆Z motion . The final depth volume of oc1 in
Fig. 5 is [1 − ∆Z motion, 10 + ∆Z motion ]. The whole process can be summarized as following
formulae
global global
Z w (oc1 )=nan, if Z w (oc1 ) < Zmin +∆Z motion or Z w (oc1 ) > Zmax − ∆Z motion, (12)
 i, j=r 
pixel c1


 Z (o )=min Z w (u c1 − i, v c1 − j) − ∆Z motion
 min

 i, j=−r
,

 i, j=r  (13)
 pixel c1

 Z (o )=max Z w (u c1 − i, v c1 − j) + ∆Z motion
 max

i, j=−r

where nan represents invalid value, r is the window size, min() is the function to calculate the
minimum value while max() is the function to calculate the maximum value. If the measured
object moves at a relatively high speed, or the captured speed of the camera is not high enough,
a large r is necessary. In most real-time measurement conditions, r = 5 is large enough.
Implementing Eqs. (12) and (13) for each pixel, the pixel-wise depth volume displayed in right
of Fig. 5 can be obtained. Because the pixel-wise depth volume only depends on the depth
information of its neighbourhood, it can accurately envelop the measured surface. Compared to
GADC, PWADC not only has the temporal adaptive property but also has the spatial adaptive
property. However, it should be noted that PWADC is not independent of GADC, it needs the
global depth volume to eliminate the effect of outliers, as reflected in Eq. (12).

2.3. Simplified left-right consistency check

The proposed ADC technique provides a strict but accurate depth volume to enhance the
robustness of SPU. However, there still exist a few unreliably reconstructed points within the
pixel-wise depth volume, especially around the contours of the moving object. Besides, it is
possible that the number of outliers in the current depth map is larger than Hmin , and in this
case, the outliers will not be set inactive. To present the occurrence of these cases, a simplified
left-right consistency check technique is proposed.
Left-right consistency check is a frequently used technique in stereo vision to detect and
remove matching errors. For SPU, we should independently calculate the fringe orders of all
valid points in c1 , and c2 , and then check the consistency between fringe orders of points in c1
and those of their matching points in c2 . The points without the consistency of fringe orders will
be finally set invalid and removed from subsequent processing. Though the left-right consistency
check often works quite well, a double computation time of SPU is required, which imposes a
heavy burdens on real-time measurement. In this paper, we proposed a more efficient left-right
consistency check to achieve better real-time performance without compromising the accuracy.
Almost all the errors of SPU are induced due to the existence of two or more candidates being
reserved after the depth constraint and phase consistency check. This has been explained in
detail in Section 2.1. There does exist some cases that only false matching points are reserved
after phase consistency check, but these cases are very rare, especially in a multi-view system.
In this paper, we do not consider these rare cases. Figure 6(a) displays the distribution of the
number of candidates. In the orange area, there is only one candidate while in the red area the
number of candidates is more than one. The points located in orange area in Fig. 6(a) are first
projected into c2 . The orange area in Fig. 6(b) denotes the matching points of that in Figure
6(a). The white area in Fig. 6(b) is the blank area without any matching points for the points in
orange area in Fig. 6(a). The green point oc1 is an arbitrary point in the red area. Two green
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22449

u c1 u c2
a b
v c1 v c2
Unreliable area
oc2 (oc1 , k -2)

Blank area

oc1 oc2 (oc1 , k )

Reliable area Projection of the reliable area

Invalid area Invalid area

Fig. 6. Diagram of simplified left-right consistency check

points oc2 (oc1 , k) and oc2 (oc1 , k − 2) in Fig. 6(b) are the 2D reserved candidates of oc1 . There
are two basic principles for the simplified left-right consistency check: (1) it is an one-to-one
correspondence between the points in c1 and the points in c2 ; (2) the area whose points have only
one candidate is the reliable area, as shown in Fig. 6(a). Point oc2 (oc1 , k − 2) is obviously not
consistent with principle (1), and we confirm that the correct matching point of oc2 (oc1 , k − 2) is
located in the orange area in Fig. 6(a) instead of oc1 . On the other hand, oc2 (oc1 , k) located in
the blank area satisfies the one-to-one relationship with oc1 . As a result, oc2 (oc1 , k) is chosen to
be the matching point. There exist some special cases that all the candidates of oc1 satisfy the
principle (1), or none of the candidates satisfy the principle (1). In these cases, oc1 will be set
invalid. Let us assume that the value of the reliable area and blank area in Fig. 6(b) is 0 and 1,
respectively, and the number of reserved candidates is N r . Then for an arbitrary point oc1 whose
N r ≥ 2, if it satisfies Õ  
oc2 oc1 , Knc1 (oc1 ) = 1, (14)
Ω

we can confirm the existence of its matching point and find it out. Otherwise, we will set
oc1 invalid. Ω represents the set of reserved candidates. This simplified left-right consistency
check inherits the basic principle from conventional left-right consistency check, but it has no
requirement of calculating the fringe orders of c2 . Therefore, the computational cost is greatly
decreased, and it is more suitable for real-time measurement.

2.4. Feedback mechanism based on the valid area

Now let us consider another special case that a new object enter the adaptive depth volume
pixel pixel
[Zmin (uc1 , v c1 ), Zmax (uc1 , v c1 )] but within the initial depth volume [Zmin, Zmax ]. Obviously,
this new object will not be correctly measured based on the above procedures. Therefore, an
additional feedback mechanism is required to detect and handle this case. In this paper, we
pixel pixel
calculate the valid area within [Zmin (uc1 , v c1 ), Zmax (uc1 , v c1 )] and [Zmin, Zmax ], respectively.
The so-called valid area is the region having at least one candidate after the depth constraint and
the phase consistency check. The numbers of the points in these two valid areas are notated as S1
and S2 . Then we can detect the appearance of the new object according to whether the following
inequality is satisfied or not,
S1 −S2 ≤ Smin (15)
where Smin is a predefined threshold (a, u). Smin = 500 is a reasonable setting for the camera
with 640 × 480 resolution. There is no appearance of new object if Eq. (15) is not satisfied,
pixel pixel
and in this case we will use [Zmin (uc1 , v c1 ), Zmax (uc1 , v c1 )] as the depth volume. Otherwise,
[Zmin, Zmax ] is set as the depth volume. The SPU methods which employ a strict depth volume
are recommended to implement this feedback mechanism based on the valid area.
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22450

Camera 1 Camera 2 Camera 3 Camera NC

Adaptive pixel-wise
depth volume
Reserved 2D
Fringe patterns Fringe patterns Fringe patterns Fringe patterns candidates
Reserved 3D Adaptive global
candidates depth volume

Phase map Phase map Phase map Phase map Yes

Eq. (15) 3D reconstruction
No

Reserved 2D Reserved 2D Reserved 2D Reserved 2D

Matching points
candidates candidates candidates candidates
Reserved 3D Reserved 3D Reserved 3D Reserved 3D
Absolute phase
candidates candidates candidates candidates

First phase Second phase (N-1)-th phase Depth Simplified left-

Depth constraint
consistency consistency consistency constraint right consistency
(conventional) check
check check check (adaptive)

Fig. 7. Flowchart of the proposed method

In order to clearly show the process of the proposed method, a flowchart is given in Fig. 7.
The green modules denote the outputs, while the red modules denote the main algorithms.
Step 1: the wrapped phase maps of different views (cameras) are calculated from the captured
fringe patterns.
Step 2: the 3D candidates of the points in camera 1 as well as the 2D candidates in camera 2 are
calculated. Only the candidates within the conventional depth volume are reserved.
Step 3: phase consistency check is implemented to reject some unqualified candidates.
Step 4: GADC and PWADC are carried out to remove some unqualified candidates from the
reserved candidates after CDC and phase consistency check(s).
Step 5: the difference between two valid areas is calculated and the feedback is sent according to
the result of Eq. (15).
Step 6: the simplified left-right consistency check is used to get the final absolute phase or
matching points.
Step 7: the 3D shape is reconstructed based on the final absolute phase or matching points.
Step 8: the global depth volume and pixel-wise depth volume are updated according to the current
3D map. Since each pixel needs search its matching point within all period orders, the proposed
algorithm has a O(n2 ) time complexity. But due to the independence of each pixel, the final time
complexity of the algorithm can be reduced to O(n) if parallel computing is implemented.

3. Experimental results
Several experiments are designed to verify the validity of the proposed techniques, including
ADC, the simplified left-right consistency check and the feedback mechanism based on the valid
area. We also separately use quad-camera and dual-camera systems to implement the real-time
measurement to display the compatibility of our method. All the cameras used in our system is
Basler acA640-750um with the highest 750fps at the full resolution 640 × 480. The cameras are
outfitted with 12mm Computar lenses. The projector is LightCrafter 4500Pro with the resolution
of 912 × 1140 and projection speed of 120Hz. In our experiments, the projection speed is
100Hz, and all the cameras are synchronized by the trigger signal from the projector. The related
parameters and thresholds are set as Zmin = −200 mm, Zmax = 200 mm, ∆Z motion = 10 mm,
Hmin = 500, r = 5, Smin = 500.

3.1. Measurement of single object

In the first experiment, a David statue with complex surface was measured to verify the robustness
of SPU. A quad-camera system was used with the projection of 48-period phase-shifting fringe
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22451

a b c d

423 9 9
0.377% 0.008% 0.008%
e f g h
z/mm

z/mm

z/mm
z/mm
Fig. 8. Measured results of David statue (see Visualization 1 for the whole results). (a)-(d)
The absolute phase maps acquired by conventional multi-frequency PSP, CDC, GADC, and
PWADC. (e)-(h) The 3D reconstruction corresponding to (a)-(d).

patterns. The retrieved absolute phase maps and the reconstruction results are shown in Fig. 8. In
the measuring process, the statue was first moved toward the measuring system, and then left static
for few seconds. During the static stage, the absolute phase map acquired by multi-frequency PSP
in Fig. 8(a) serves as the ground truth to detect the errors in Fig. 8(b) - 8(d). The quantitative
numbers and ratios of falsely unwrapped points are counted and displayed in the right bottom in
Fig. 8(b) - 8(d). Here the missing points beyond the common field of views are set inactive and
removed from the statistics. The erroneous regions are marked by the red dotted circles. We can
easily find that: (1) compared to CDC, the robustness of ADC increases obviously; (2) there
is no difference between the performance of GADC and PWADC when measured such a small
single object. Besides, The comparison between Fig. 8(f) and Fig. 8(e) suggests that the falsely
reconstructed points are far from their true positions. All the experimental results are consistent
with our analysis in Section 2.2. More detailed measurement results of the moving statue are
shown in Visualization 1.

3.2. Measurement of two isolated objects

In Section 2.2.2, we have pointed out the problem of GADC under the case of measuring a
large-size object or two isolated objects. The second experiment is designed to explain this
problem and verify the superiority of PWADC. Two isolated objects including a ping-pong and a
geometry model were measured in this experiment, as shown in Fig. 9(i). The ping-pong was
arranged far from the camera and remained static while the model was shifted from the position
near the camera to the position far from the camera. Since the valid depth volume (about 300
mm) is much larger than that in the first experiment (about 150 mm), the robustness of GADC is
obviously inferior to that of PWADC, although it has been enhanced compared to that of CDC.
From the Fig. 9(j) - 9(l), it is found that GADC has removed some redundancies in CDC but more
redundancies still exist compared to adaptive PWADC. The more detailed results are displayed in
Visualization 2. This experiment provides a strong evidence for the principle in Sections 2.2.1
and 2.2.2. Note that the X and Y coordinates in Fig. 9(j) - 9(l) are pixel coordinates, and the
invalid area of Fig. 9(l) is hidden to outstand the valid area.
In the previous two experiments, we do not use any left-right consistency check and related
algorithms. Next, the simplified left-right consistency check is added to our system to re-analyze
the data of the second experiment. Figure 10 displays the final results. Comparing Fig. 10(b)
with Fig. 9(b), we can find that the simplified left-right consistency check can reduce the error
ratio obviously. However, the missing ratio in Fig. 10(b) after the simplified left-right consistency
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22452

a 7352 b 3487 c 7 d
5.485% 2.602% 0.005%

e f g h
z/mm

z/mm

z/mm

z/mm
i j k l

z/mm
z/mm

z/mm

Fig. 9. Measured results of a plastic ball and a geometry model (see Visualization 2 for the
whole results). (a)-(d) The absolute phase maps acquired by conventional multi-frequency
PSP, CDC, GADC, and PWADC. (e)-(h) The 3D reconstruction corresponding to (a)-(d).
(i)-(l) Depth volumes corresponding to (e)-(h).

a 55 b 11 c 7 d
0.049% 0.008% 0.005%

e f g h
z/mm

z/mm

z/mm

z/mm

i j k l

Fig. 10. Measured results with the simplified left-right consistency check (see Visualization 3
for the whole results). (a)-(h) The results corresponding to Fig. 9(a) - Fig. 9(h). (i)-(l)
enlarged details corresponding to (e)-(h).
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22453

check increases obviously. That is because that there are too many unreliable areas which should
be checked by Eq. (14). That means more points have the possibility of being not satisfied
with Eq. (14) and set inactive. To reduce the error ratio and simultaneously not increase the
missing ratio, we must have the precondition that the unreliable area cannot be too large. The
small missing ratio in Fig. 10(c) and nearly perfect missing ratio in Fig. 10(d) just benefit from
their less and less unreliable areas. It is worth decreasing the error ratio at the cost of increasing
missing ratio because the low error rate of depth map will generate a correct compact depth
volume which will conversely decrease the unreliable areas and the missing ratio. Visualization 3
further displays more related details about the experiment.

3.3. Real-time experiments

In the last experiment, we focus on validating the performance of the feedback mechanism and

a b

Fig. 11. The real-time measurement process and results using our method based on (a)
quad-camera system (see Visualization 4 for the whole process) and (b) dual-camera system
(see Visualization 5 for the whole process).

the ability of real-time measurement and the compatibility of our method. A ping-pong and a
microscope shell were measured in this experiment. The microscope shell was rotated by an
electronic control turntable, the ping-pong was hung on a position far from the microscope shell.
In the beginning, the ping-pong was shaded by the microscope shell, but with the continuous
rotation of the microscope shell, the ping-pong revealed gradually. Because the ping-pong
was far from and shaded by the microscope shell, it was not included in the adaptive depth
volume. However, when it revealed, its position would be accurately detected by the feedback
mechanism, and the adaptive depth volume was updated quickly. We implemented this experiment
using dual-camera and quad-camera system respectively to verify the compatibility for different
multi-view systems of our method. About 40fps and 60fps reconstruction speed can be achieved
by the quad-camera system and the dual-camera system, respectively. The real-time measurement
processes and results of quad-camera and dual-camera system can be found in Visualization 4
and Visualization 5. Two frames of Visualization 4 and Visualization 5 are shown in Fig. 11.
 Vol. 26, No. 17 | 20 Aug 2018 | OPTICS EXPRESS 22454

4. Conclusion
We have presented a high-speed real-time 3D shape measurement approach based on ADC,
where the measurement depth volume for geometric constraints is adaptively updated according
to the current reconstructed geometry. The rationality of the proposed approach relies on the fact
that the depth distribution of a moving object varies continuously in both spatial and temporal
domain, which allows to define a compact depth volume and helps enhance the robustness of
SPU. Furthermore, the adaptively updated measurement depth guarantees that the measured
object can freely move within a large measurement volume. Besides, two complementary
techniques, including simplified left-right consistency check and feedback mechanism based
on valid area, are introduced to further remove erroneously unwrapped region and increase
the robustness and flexibility of the ADC. The adaptive depth constraint approach, along with
simplified left-right consistency check and feedback mechanism based on valid area constitute
a complete computational framework for robust and efficient phase unwrapping in high-speed
real-time 3D shape measurement. Besides, the proposed approach has low computation cost and
good real-time performance. The processing speed can be further significantly improved by using
graphics processing units (GPUs), as all the involved algorithms are performed pixel-wise and
highly parallelizable. Experiments demonstrated the ability of the method to perform real-time
3D shape measurement with high-accuracy, for complex surfaces and spatially isolated objects,
using only three high frequency fringe patterns.
There are several aspects that need to be further improved in the proposed method, which we
will leave for future consideration. First, there are several parameters in the proposed approach,
which should be properly selected for different kinds of motion. Currently, we empirically set
these parameters according to the overall property of the test scene. It should be better that these
parameters can be automatically and adaptively selected. Second, we simply use the measurement
volume to replace the adaptive depth volume when a new object appears within the measurement
volume but out of the adaptive depth volume, which is not an optimal selection. How to handle
both cases is an another interesting direction for further investigation.

Funding
National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFF0106403); National Natural Science Fund of
China (61722506, 61705105, 111574152); Final Assembly ‘13th Five-Year Plan’ Advanced
Research Project of China (30102070102); Equipment Advanced Research Fund of China
(61404150202), The Key Research and Development Program of Jiangsu Province, China
(BE2017162); Outstanding Youth Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (BK20170034);
National Defense Science and Technology Foundation of China (0106173); ‘Six Talent Peaks’
project of Jiangsu Province, China (2015-DZXX-009); ‘333 Engineering’ research project
of Jiangsu Province, China (BRA2016407, BRA2015294); Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Universities (30917011204, 30916011322); Open Research Fund of Jiangsu Key
Laboratory of Spectral Imaging & Intelligent Sense (3091601410414); China Postdoctoral
Science Foundation (2017M621747), and Jiangsu Planned Projects for Postdoctoral Research
Funds (1701038A).

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