Comparative analysis of low-pass filters for the demodulation of projected gratings in 3-D adaptive profilometry

In 3-D adaptive profilometry based on structured light projection, the choice of the low-pass filter to he used in the deformed pattern demodulation is crucial. In this paper, we have studied the performance of a typical finite impulse response (FIR) and of an infinite impulse response (IIR) Butterworth low-pass filter. Adaptiveness of the filters to both coarse and small variations of the grating frequency has been investigated. The ability of the filters to adapt to coarse changes of the grating frequency has been quantified in terms of their speed of synthesis, while the ability of the filters to tolerate small variations of the grating frequency has been quantified by measuring the residual phase errors. The analysis shows that the IIR Butterworth filter performs better than the FIR filter both in the coarse and in the fine grating frequency variation cases