The calculation of the density field from axisymmetric schlieren interferograms by the image processing techniques

The schlieren interferograms used to be analyzed in a qualitative way. In this paper, by means of the powerful computational ability and the large memory of computer; the image processing method is investigated for the digitalization of an axisymmetric schlieren interferogram and the determination of the density field. This method includes the 2-D low-pass filtering, the thinning of interferometric fringes, the extraction of physical information and the numerical integration of the density field. The image processing results show that the accuracy of the quantitative analysis of the schlieren interferogram can be improved and a lot of time can be saved in dealing with optical experimental results. Therefore, the algorithm used here is useful and efficient.