210 CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 7, No. 3 / March 10, 2009
Homomorphic partial differential equation filtering method
for electronic speckle pattern interferometry fringes
based on fringe density
Fang Zhang (
ÜÜÜ
ǑǑǑ
)
1,2∗
, Wenyao Liu (
444
©©©
)
1,2
, Lin Xia (
ggg
)
1,2
,
Jinjiang Wang (
AAA
õõõ
)
1,2
, and Yue Zhu (
ÁÁÁ
)
1,2
1
College of Precise Instrument and Optical Electronic Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072
2
Key Laboratory of Opto-Electronics Information Technical Science, Ministry of Education, Tianjin 300072
∗
E-mail: hhzhangfang@126.com
Received July 1, 2008
Noise reduction is one of the most exciting problems in electronic speckle pattern interferometry. We
present a homomorphic partial differential equation filtering method for interferometry fringe patterns.
The diffusion speed of the equation is determined b ased on the fringe density. We test the new method
on the computer-simulated fringe pattern and ex perimentally obtain the fringe pattern, and evaluate its
filtering performance. The qualitative and quantitative analysis shows that this technique can filter off the
additive and multiplicative noise of the fringe patterns effectively, and avoid blurring high-density fringe.
It is more capable of improving the quality of fringe patterns than the classical filtering methods.
OCIS codes: 120.6160, 070.6110.
doi: 10.3788/COL20090703.0210.
Electronic sp e ckle pattern interfero metry (ESPI) is a
well-known, nondestructive, and full-field technique for
displacement measurements
[1−3]
. Accurate extraction of
phase from fringe patterns is of fundamental importa nce
for the successful application of ESPI in obtaining the
displacement. However, the strong grain-shape random
noise in fringe patterns leads to heavy restr aint to phase
extraction. Therefore, it is important to filter off the
noise from fringe patterns to make phas e extraction eas-
ier, more robust, and more a c c urate
[2]
. In general, the
traditional filtering methods including spatial filtering
and frequency filtering, usually result in blurring effect.
Therefore, some algorithms have been proposed to reduce
the noise for ESPI fringe patterns, including Lee filtering,
which is a noise filtering by the use of local statistics
[4]
,
span filtering, which filters off the fr inge noise in a curva-
ture window
[2]
, and recursive a lgorithm, which has high
computation speed but the result has low contrast
[5]
.
Since the initial evolving equation, heat conduction
equation, was used in image filtering in 1983
[6]
, various
forms of partial differe ntial equations (PDEs) have been
proposed for the filtering of noisy images
[7−12]
. How-
ever, the existing PDE filtering methods usually lead to
insufficient denoising in the interior ar e a of fringe pat-
terns, or blurring effect on the fringe patterns with high
fringe density. This is because these general PDE meth-
ods do not consider the fr inge features, i.e., the multi-
plicative noise and the fringe density.
Perona et al. proposed a nonlinear anisotropic
diffusion equation (called PM equation)
[7]
, which has
been widely used in image denoising and enhancement.
The gray levels of an image u(x, y, t) : Ω × [0, +∞) → R
are diffused according to
∂
t
u = div (c (|∇u|) ∇u) , u (x, y, 0) = I (x, y) , (1)
where I (x, y) is the initial image, ∇u is the g radient of
u, and diffusion ge ne c is a nonincreasing function of the
gradient such as 1/(1 + |∇u|
2
/k
2
). It implies a direct
relation between the image smoothness at a point and
the image gradient
[8]
. Unfortunately, this model is very
sensitive to noise.
By formally developing the divergence term, the PM
equation c an be desc rib e d in the inner orthogonal co-
ordinates based on the image featur e
[9]
. We define the
inner orthogonal coordinates, i.e., the normal direction
~
N and the tangent direction
~
T as
~
N = (u
x
, u
y
)/
q
u
2
x
+ u
2
y
,
~
T = (− u
y
, u
x
)/
q
u
2
x
+ u
2
y
. (2)
Then Eq. (1) can be put in terms of the second der iva-
tives of
~
N and
~
T :
∂
t
u =
1
1 + |∇u|
2
.
k
2
1 − |∇u|
2
.
k
2
1 + |∇u|
2
.
k
2
u
NN
+ u
T T
, (3)
where
u
NN
=
u
2
x
u
xx
+ u
2
y
u
yy
+ 2u
x
u
y
u
xy
u
2
x
+ u
2
y
,
u
T T
=
u
2
x
u
yy
+ u
2
y
u
xx
− 2u
x
u
y
u
xy
u
2
x
+ u
2
y
. (4)
From Eq. (3), one can find that if |∇u|/k ≤ 1, it is a for-
ward diffusion model and the image becomes denoised;
but if |∇u|/k > 1, it includes a backward diffusion along
the normal directio n
~
N and the equation is ill-posed in
mathematics. Qia n et al. modified the diffusion gene
and pr oposed a new model
[9]
∂
t
u =
1
r
1 + |∇u|
2
.
k
2
1
1 + |∇u|
2
.
k
2
u
NN
+ u
T T
,
(5)
1671-7694/2009/030210-04
c
2009 Chinese Optics Letters