Optical three-dimensional profilometry method based on processing

Abstract

An optical three-dimensional profilometry method in which are recorded SPECKLE images formed by the interference, due to different optical paths, of the rays reflected/diffused by a rough object and the rays generated by a beam source. The method presents a number of processing steps including the steps of digitizing a first SPECKLE image, modifying the optical path difference, and digitizing a second SPECKLE image recorded after modifying the optical path difference. The difference in the modulus of the corresponding pixels of the first and second digitized images is determined to generate a difference image which is subsequently analyzed. A first arbitrary value is assigned to all the difference image pixels exceeding a given threshold value, and a second arbitrary value is assigned to all the difference image pixels of a value below the threshold. The binary image so generated is processed to generate an artificial image in which all the binary image pixels equal to the second arbitrary value are assigned a zero value, and all the binary image pixels equal to the first arbitrary value are assigned a current processing step value. The processing steps are repeated cyclically for a predetermined number of steps to generate a depth map presenting a number of pixels. Each pixel represents a grey level corresponding to the last processing step in which the threshold was exceeded. The depth map contains three-dimensional information relative to the profile of the rough object under examination.