Adaptive window Wigner-Ville-distribution-based method to estimate phase derivative from optical fringes.

We introduce an adaptive window Wigner-Ville-distribution-based method to directly estimate the phase derivative from a single fringe pattern. In the proposed method, the phase derivative is estimated by using the peak detection of the pseudo-Wigner-Ville distribution for a set of different window lengths. Then the optimal window length is selected from the set by resolving the estimator's bias variance trade-off, using the intersection of confidence intervals rule. Finally, the phase derivative estimate corresponding to the optimum window is selected. Simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the method's applicability for the phase derivative estimation.