REVIEW ARTICLE: Phase-evaluation methods in whole-field optical measurement techniques

Many optical measurement techniques provide fringe patterns as their results. The decodification processes that employ one or several fringe patterns to automatically retrieve the phase are generally designated as phase-evaluation methods. In this work, an overview of these methods will be schematically presented. Their particular performances will be compared, stressing their main advantages and drawbacks. An important group of these methods employs the well-known phase-shifting algorithms as a tool for calculating the phase. In the general form of these algorithms, the principal value of the optical phase is computed by an inverse trigonometric function whose argument is a combination of phase-shifted intensity values, provided by the modulation of one or several fringe patterns. These algorithms will be also studied in the general context of the phase-evaluation methods.