Digital speckle-pattern shearing interferometry.

An application of digital image processing techniques to speckle-shearing interferometry is described. A present system consists of an image-shearing camera using a Fresnel biprism of small angles and a digital TV-image processing facility. This interferometer makes it easy to measure in quasi-real-time spatial derivatives of surface displacement and modal vibration amplitude of objects. A statistical theory is applied to analyze the formations of these fringes due to 3-D displacement. Interpretation of the result leads to conditions of maximum fringe contrast and the limitation of this technique. Experimental results in the three cases of slope of normal displacement, surface strain, and slope of vibration amplitude measurements are presented.