Q Xue et al
2
and needs no extra hardware. However it is not suitable for
colorful objects and is potentially inuenced by ambient light.
To solve the problem of chromatic aberration, Zhang [15]
described a method that used a chessboard calibration object
to calibrate the chromatic component; however, the chro-
matic component of the projector was neglected. Pagès [16]
projected three patterns that included red, green, and blue
stripes onto a plate board. The average distances between
the different color stripes in each place were then calculated.
Then, the average distance was considered to be the compen-
sation of the error caused by the chromatic aberration. This
method compensates for the error with a constant; however,
the error varies with location. Zhang and Towers [17] pro-
posed a method that a linear error model could compensate
for phase errors caused by chromatic aberration. Although
this method yields accurate results, the phase errors are not
equally spaced.
The primary purpose of this study is to obtain a high meas-
urement accuracy in the presence of color crosstalk and chro-
matic aberration. A two-level space-time color-coding method
is thus proposed. The rst-level code is the space-code, which
is composed of periodic color stripes at different frequencies;
the stripes are encoded by the color sequence of the stripes.
The second-level code included is the time-code, which
distinguishes different periods of the space-code with gray
code. The red (R) channel, green (G) channel and blue (B)
channel of the rst level of the coded pattern are composed
of periodic stripes with three different frequencies, respec-
tively. The highest frequency is the integral multiple of the
others. Because only the centers of the stripes in the highest
frequency channel are required to be extracted, the inuence
of chromatic aberration can be avoided. Due to the integral
multiple relationship between the three frequencies, we use
a self-adaptive windowed Fourier transform to remove the
inuence of color crosstalk. The experimental results verify
that the proposed coding method improves the measurement
accuracy and guarantees the measurement efciency and reli-
ability of the coding.
The organization of this paper can be described as follows.
Section 2 introduces the two-level space-time color-coding
method. The data processing methods used are described
in section 3. The system and results of the experiments are
shown in section4, and section5 presents the conclusions of
the study.
2. Two-level space-time color-coding method
Color-coding methods have improved the measurement ef-
ciency of 3D measurement systems that use structured light;
however, the reliability of color-coding is lower than that of
monochromatic coding. Additionally, the measurement accu-
racy decreases due to color crosstalk and chromatic aberration.
In this section, a two-level space-time color-coding method is
introduced. This method avoids chromatic aberration, yields
good efciency, guarantees coding reliability, and solves the
problems of color crosstalk using multiple frequencies.
2.1. First-level code
The rst-level coding pattern is a space-coded pattern that
consists of periodic color stripes. Three channels (R, G and
B) of the pattern are composed of periodic stripes at three dif-
ferent frequencies respectively. The channel with the highest
frequency stripes is dened as the channel used for stripe
center extraction (CSCE), while the other two channels are
dened as coding channels. The channel that has a reectivity
that varies most slowly is chosen to be the CSCE. The con-
crete method for choosing CSCE is shown in gure1. Then,
three frequencies must be calculated.
First, the smallest distance between the stripes in the CSCE
is calculated using equation(1):
⩽∆ =
d
f
S
P
(1)
As shown in gure2, S is the eld size, N
P
is the resolution
of projected image along the direction perpendicular to the
stripes. ΔS is the desired spatial resolution for measurement
object. f
1
is the frequency of stripes in the CSCE. The other
frequencies are denoted by f
2
and f
3
, which are dened by
equation(2);
=
=
⎨
⎪
⎪
⎩
⎪
⎪
f
f
k
f
f
k
2
1
1
3
1
2
(2)
where k
1
and k
2
are different integers that are larger than 1.
Three gray patterns are combined into one color stripe pattern;
these combined color stripes are periodic, the period of which
is dened by equation(3):
Figure 1. The ow chart of the method for choosing CSCE.
Meas. Sci. Technol. 26 (2015) 1152 04