Fast half-quadratic regularized phase tracking for nonnormalized fringe patterns.

Although one of the simplest and powerful approaches for the demodulation of a single fringe pattern with closed fringes is the regularized phase-tracking (RPT) technique, this technique has two important drawbacks: its sensibility at the fringe-pattern modulation and the time employed in the estimation. We present modifications to the RPT technique that consist of the inclusion of a rough estimate of the fringe-pattern modulation and the linearization of the fringe-pattern model that allows the minimization of the cost function through stable numerical linear techniques. With these changes, the demodulation of nonnormalized fringe patterns is made with a significant reduction in the processing time, preserving the demodulation accuracy of the original RPT method.