Editorial: Special Issue on Advances in Optical Imaging and Metrology-Selected Papers From the Conference Fringe 2013

Twenty-six years ago it was a joint idea with Hans Rottenkolber, a pioneer of holographic metrology, to organize a workshop dedicated to the discussion of the latest results in automatic processing of fringe patterns. This idea was promoted by the insight that automatic and high precision phase measurement techniques will play a key role in all future industrial and scientific applications of optical imaging and metrology. In the stimulating atmosphere of the first workshop conducted in 1989, the proposal came up to organize that event in an Olympic schedule. Meanwhile 7 workshops have been successfully organized and their main topics were always adapted to the most interesting subjects of the current cycle. For the Fringe 2013 the scope was markedly extended by accentuating the bridge between imaging and metrology. On the one hand, both disciplines are self-standing topics with a long tradition. On the other hand, the current trends in both disciplines show increasing dynamics and fusion stimulated by many fascinating innovations such as high resolution microscopy, computational imaging, 3D imaging, sensor fusion and nano-metrology. Consequently, modern topics like computational imaging, compressed sensing, high-resolution digital wavefront engineering and sensor fusion were included in the program and presented by internationally leading experts. The complete content of all contributions can be found in the proceedings. This special issue offers a selection of 13 papers addressing different topics of the latest Fringe workshop and fitting to the scope of the International Journal of Optomechatronics. All papers highlight their special topic in a more extended way as already presented in the above mentioned proceedings. The given selection conveys a comprehensive overview of the wide bandwidth of topics which was addressed at the workshop and reports about the latest achievements in optical imaging and metrology such as: