Anisotropic partial differential equation noise-reduction algorithm based on fringe feature for ESPI

Noise reduction is one of the most exciting problems in electronic speckle pattern interferometry. We present a new anisotropic partial differential equation noise-reduction algorithm based on fringe orientation for interferometric fringe patterns. The proposed equation performs diffusion along the two directions of fringe gradient and isophote line, which are extracted accurately according to fringe feature. By restriction of diffusion in the gradient direction of fringe patterns, this method can provide optimal results in denoising but does not destroy fringe edges. The experimental results show that this technique is more capable of significantly improving the quality of the fringe patterns than the classical anisotropic diffusion equation proposed by Perona and Malik. Based on our filtered fringe patterns, the phase map obtained by phase-shifting technique can be extracted more accurately. It is an effective pre-processing method for electronic speckle pattern interferometry.     

A combined method for obtaining fringe orientations of ESPI

Fringe orientation can direct the processing of fringe patterns and provide basic information for understanding the fringe patterns. The gradient method is popularly used for its convenience but it is easily affected by noise. The plane-fit method is capable of obtaining precise local fringe orientation despite the high speckle noise but it is strict with the calculating window size. In this paper, a combined method is proposed. This method uses the plane-fit algorithm to get local gradients and uses the gradient method to get the orientation results from these gradients. It can be seen that this new method can get more accurate orientations for ESPI than both the gradient method and the plane-fit method.     

Eliminating the zero spectrum in Fourier transform profilometry using a two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform

In this paper, a filtering technique based upon two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform (2D-CWT) is used to eliminate the low frequency components of fringe patterns. The filtered fringe patterns are subsequently demodulated using a standard Fourier transform profilometry (FTP) algorithm. This image pre-filtering stage improves the noise performance of the FTP algorithm and enables the FTP method to demodulate fringe patterns with larger bandwidths. Also, the 2D-CWT technique reduces speckle noise significantly. Moreover, only a single fringe pattern is required in this technique. The 2D-CWT algorithm is capable of separating low frequency terms from the high frequency terms that contain phase-modulated fringe information, even when both interfere, greatly, in the frequency domain. The proposed algorithm is tested, both via computer simulation and using real fringe patterns. This revealed the robustness of this algorithm and also demonstrably enables the demodulation of a wider range of fringe patterns using the FTP technique.     

Optimally discriminant moments for speckle detection in real B-scan images

The paper presents and evaluates a speckle detection method for B-scan images. This is a fully automatic method and does not require information about the sensor parameters, which is often missing in retrospective studies.The characterization and posterior detection of speckle noise in ultrasound (US) has been regarded as an important research topic in US imaging, for improving signal-to-noise ratio by removing speckle noise and for exploiting speckle correlation information. Most of the existing methods require either manual intervention, the need to know sensor parameters or are based on statistical models which often do not generalize well to B-scans of different imaging areas. The proposed method aims to overcome those limitations.The main novelty of this work is to show that speckle detection can be improved based on finding optimally discriminant low order speckle statistics. In addition, and in contrast with other approaches the presented method is fully automatic and can be efficiently implemented to B-scan images.The method detects speckle patches using an ellipsoid discriminant function which classifies patches based on features extracted from optimally discriminant low order moments of the uncompressed intensity B-scan information. In addition, if the uncompressed signal is not available, we propose and evaluate a method for the estimation of this factor.The computation of low order moments using an optimality criteria, the decompression factor estimation and other key aspects of the method are quantitatively evaluated using both simulated and real (phantom and in vivo) data. Speckle detection results are obtained using again phantom and in vivo studies which show the validity of our approach. In addition, speckle probability images (SPI) are presented which provide valuable information about the distribution of speckle and non-speckle areas in an image.The presented evaluation and results show the effectiveness of our approach. In particular, the need for using discriminant analysis to determine the optimal discriminant power of the statistical moments and that this optimal value strongly depends on the characteristics and imaged tissues in the B-scan data.     

Quantitative vibration amplitude measurement with time-averaged digital speckle pattern interferometry

A new method of using time-averaged digital speckle pattern interferometry for the quantitative measurement of vibration amplitude was developed. Signal processing techniques especially the Hilbert transformation for quantitative evaluation of the Bessel fringes obtained in time-averaged digital speckle pattern interferometry were explored. The quadrature signal after Hilbert transformation is equivalent to a 90° phase-shifted interferogram for a monotonically increasing or decreasing phase function. An algorithm was developed for Bessel fringe contrast enhancement and phase extraction. The techniques were tested numerically and experimentally. Sub-fringe quantification of the time-averaged vibration fringes is realised with the proposed method. Compared with the commonly used phase shift method which requires a minimum of two images for image processing, this method requires only one fringe pattern for data extraction.     

Simultaneous measurement with one-capture of the two in-plane components of displacement by electronic speckle pattern interferometry

We present the simultaneous measurement of the two in-plane displacement components by electronic speckle pattern interferometry with three object beams and without an in-line reference beam. Three interference fringe patterns, corresponding to three different sensitivity vectors, are recorded in a single interferogram and separated by means of the Fourier transform method. Then, two interference fringe patterns are selected to obtain the in-plane displacement components.     

Phase measurement improvement in temporal speckle pattern interferometry using empirical mode decomposition

When the Hilbert transform method is used to recover the phase distribution in temporal speckle pattern interferometry, the influence of the fluctuations of the bias and the modulation intensities on the calculated phase must be driven heuristically. In this paper we show that the Empirical Mode Decomposition method can overcome these drawbacks and consequently introduces an improvement in the evaluation of the phase distribution. An example is used to illustrate the phase measurement improvement that can be obtained by the application of the proposed approach.     

基于Gabor滤波的散斑条纹图平滑方法

提出了一种基于伽博(Gabor)滤波的散斑条纹图平滑方法.通过加窗傅里叶运算提取散斑条纹图的条纹频率和条纹梯度方向,并利用它们确定具有频率和方向选择性的Gabor滤波器对散斑条纹图进行Gabor滤波.数值模拟和实验结果表明,该方法在滤除散斑噪声的同时能够有效的保留散斑条纹图的条纹结构,为从单幅散斑条纹图中进一步提取条纹相位场奠定了良好的基础.     

Uncertainty analysis of whole-field phase-differences retrieved from ESPI fringe patterns by using the Fourier transform method (FTM)

We have evaluated the uncertainty associated with the whole-field phase-differences retrieved by using the Fourier transform method (FTM), from a fringe pattern generated by electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI). The phase-differences were induced by applying load to an elastic sample. The FTM involved the Fourier transform application to the fringe pattern, the isolation of the term carrying the phase information by applying a band-pass filter in the spatial frequency domain, and then the inverse Fourier transform application. Since the fringes in the analyzed pattern were adequately open, the FTM outcomes were presumed to be mainly affected by errors in the determination of both the width and the location of the applied filter mask. The influence of these error sources was assessed by using a Monte Carlo-based computer simulation. It implied evaluating the phase-differences a large number of times under the influence of the involved error sources. We found that the phase uncertainty depends strongly on the width of the applied filter mask; the influence of the other error sources considered into the uncertainty propagation was significantly smaller.     

Speckle noise attenuation in optical coherence tomography by compounding images acquired at different positions of the sample

This study demonstrates a simple method for attenuating the speckle noise generated by coherent multiple-scattered photons in optical-coherence tomography images. The method could be included among the space-diversity techniques used for speckle reduction. It relies on displacing the sample along a weakly focused beam in the sample arm of the interferometer, acquiring a coherent image for each sample position and adding the individual images to form a compounded image. It is proven that the compounded image displays a reduction in the speckle noise generated by multiple scattered photons and an enhancement in the intensity signal caused by single-backscattered photons. To evaluate its potential biomedical applications, the method is used to investigate in vitro a caries lesion affecting the enamel layer of a wisdom tooth. Because of the uncorrelated nature of the speckle noise the compounded image provides a better mapping of the lesion compared to a single (coherent) image.     

Fringe analysis by automatic image fitting and its application to speckle pattern photography

A new image processing technique is described that has been found well suited for the fully automatic evaluation of Young's fringes in speckle pattern photography. The basic idea is fringe pattern analysis by creating synthetic images and fitting them to the image picked up by a TV camera. High speed fringe generation and comparison is achieved using a videoprocessor. A theoretical discussion and experimental results show the efficiency of this method for subfringe evaluation, i.e. the measurement of displacements well below the mean speckle size.     

Effect of image fiber on the speckle fringe pattern in image fiber-guided DSPI endoscopy

The effect of using an image fiber on the speckle fringe visibility in an endoscopic DSPI is analyzed here. An endoscope system was designed and developed, using image fiber as the speckle pattern image conduit, to work in the out-of-plane speckle interferometric configuration and experiments were carried out using a curved phantom tissue specimen as the test target. Experimental results obtained using the developed system are compared with that obtained using conventional DSPI system. To obtain a relative and quantitative comparison of the quality of the fringes obtained employing the two methods, an evaluation method that can give a quantified ‘score’ is proposed here.     

Window fringe pattern demodulation by multi-functional fitting using a genetic algorithm

We present a new way to demodulate complicated fringe patterns containing closed fringes using a genetic algorithm (GA). The entire fringe pattern is divided into a set of partially overlapping smaller sub-image windows. Each of these has a lower dimensionality and as a consequence is faster and can be demodulated more reliably. The demodulation process proceeds row-by-row way passing from one sub-image in a neighborhood until the whole interferogram is processed. The modulating phase of each sub-image is modeled as a parametric analytic function whose parameters are optimized using a GA. The technique is demonstrated demodulating some normalized fringe patterns that have two main difficulties: closed fringes within the interferogram and regions of under-sampled fringes. These fringe images cannot be demodulated by techniques such as the regularized phase tracker (RPT).     

Evaluation of dynamic speckle activity using the empirical mode decomposition method

The empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method is used to process sequences of dynamic speckle patterns to segment the differential activity that presents a sample as a function of the spatial coordinates and time. The application of the method is illustrated by segmenting bruised regions in fruits. A discussion of the obtained results and a comparison with the use of the filter bank technique are also presented.     

Formulation of moiré fringes based on spatial averaging

The use of moiré technique in measurements often involves locating the position of moiré fringe and in some cases determining its profile. Due to intensity fluctuation in the fringe pattern, these measurements are accompanied by some errors. It is possible to define a smoothed version of the original fringe pattern and then formulate the related subject in accordance with the characteristics of this new pattern. This procedure reduces these types of errors and gives a well-defined profile of the fringes. In this paper a formulation of moiré phenomenon based on spatial averaging is presented which, without ignoring any of frequencies, leads to a smooth profile.     

Phase-shifting whole-field speckle photography technique for the measurement of in-plane deformations in real time

A new real-time phase-shifting readout system is developed for quantitative evaluation of full-field correlation fringes obtained by means of Fourier filtering in speckle photography. The proposed method, which uses photorefractive crystals as the recording medium, is capable of mapping the whole-field displacement data from the recorded phase-shifted fringe patterns. Experimental results are presented on a diffuse surface subjected to rotation in its own plane.     

Quantitative assessment of lateral resolution improvement in digital holography

Controllable experimental features such as wavelength, camera’s specifications and reconstruction distance, determine the theoretical limit for lateral resolution in digital holography; however, due to the speckle noise associated to any coherent imaging system it is not possible to reach this theoretical limit. In this paper, a quantitative study the lateral resolution for digital holography under the effect the speckle noise is carried out. It is shown that by reducing the contrast of the speckle noise the resolution capabilities of digital holography are improved; the signal-to-noise ratio of the reconstructed holograms is the metric use to quantitatively assess the reached resolution in the holographic experiments.     

Analysis of reflection speckle holograms in a BSO crystal

A theoretical and experimental study of speckle registering in photorefractive BSO crystals through reflection hologram geometry is implemented. The three-dimensional speckle nature is considered in the diffraction efficiency calculations. The interference process produces index-of-refraction gratings in the speckle volume via the photorefractive effect. It is demonstrated that the coupled-wave theory for reflection geometry allows explaining the diffraction efficiency behavior when the interaction length is properly taken into account. It means that the speckle depth is related with the interaction length. The speckle depth can be controlled by the imaging system pupil aperture diameter. Under this condition, the influence of the speckle depth on the diffraction efficiency is analyzed. An agreement between the numerical model based on the coupled-wave theory and the experimental results is obtained.     

Topological and morphological transformations of developing singular paraxial vector light fields

The paper is devoted to establishment of the real-time topological and morphological dynamics of generic developing paraxial elliptic speckle fields generated and driven by the system ‘laser beam + photorefractive crystal LiNbO₃:Fe’. Generic space-time development of full gamut of polarization ellipse parameters (ellipticity, azimuth, morphology of C points, optical diabolos and handedness) and their combination in fixed beam cross-section was measured in details by the elaborated quick-action real-time Stokes-polarimetry. Whole field irreversible evolution is fulfilled through totality of random space/time C point pair nucleation/annihilation. The ‘life-story’ of C point and optical diabolo pairs is realized through ‘local topological/morphological transition’ with fully reversible scenario. It starts from smooth fragment of speckle field by formation of pre-nucleation local structure and finishes by after-annihilation local structure which decays to another smooth structure. Scenarios of star-monstar pair nucleation/annihilation and monstar  ↔  lemon transformation were established. Measured statistics of C point and diabolo morphological forms was in excellent agreement with theory predictions. All allowed scenarios of diabolo pair ‘life-story’ started/finished as star-hyperbolic monstar-hyperbolic pair were measured. Evolution of polarization ellipses handedness is implemented through L contours movement and reconnection with a saddle as the catalyst. Reconnection of L contour peninsula leads to birth of closed L contour delimiting island of fixed handedness ellipses with/without C points. Elaborated approach and presented results start the dynamic singular optics of time-dependent vector light fields.