Efficient multiple phase shift patterns for dense 3D acquisition in structured light scanning

Although phase shifts (PS) are frequently used to acquire colored surfaces of static objects, especially when acquisition time is not critical, the periodic nature of relative (wrapped) PS maps makes it necessary to deal with the issue of phase unwrapping. Consequently, multiple phase shifts (MPS) have been widely used as an alternative, but this usually involves a large number of different PS maps to unwrap an absolute (unique) phase. In this paper we propose a new MPS method to unwrap a phase and accurately perform the dense 3D acquisition of neutral and colored objects using only two PS maps. Accuracy is reported including a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the results. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.