Phase unwrapping error correction based on phase edge detection and classification

Abstract A method is proposed to detect and correct the phase unwrapping error (PUE). Phase edge is defined to help detect points potential with PUEs. Then, phase derivatives of points crossing phase edges are used to inspect whether the phase edges are from surface discontinuity or PUE. This makes it possible to dismiss phases at discontinuous regions during the PUE correction. Hence, the proposed method evidently improves the robustness of PUE correction with little additional time consumption. Experiments confirm that it is capable of correcting PUE with outstanding robustness and efficiency. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that phase edge is defined with aid of unwrapped phase, and used for PUE correction.