Enhanced phase unwrapping algorithm based on unscented Kalman filter, enhanced phase gradient estimator, and path-following strategy.

This paper presents an enhanced phase unwrapping algorithm by combining an unscented Kalman filter, an enhanced local phase gradient estimator based on an amended matrix pencil model, and a path-following strategy. This technology is able to accurately unwrap seriously noisy wrapped phase images by applying the unscented Kalman filter to simultaneously perform noise suppression and phase unwrapping along the path from the high-quality region to the low-quality region of the wrapped phase images. Results obtained with synthetic data and real data validate the effectiveness of the proposed method and show improved performance of this new algorithm with respect to some of the most used algorithms.