Automatic exposure control method for 3D shape measurement of specular surface based on digital fringe projection

Digital fringe projection (DFP) is widely applied in three-dimensional (3D) shape measurements. However, its performance is severely disturbed while measuring complex surfaces with an extensive range of reflectivity. In this paper, to enhance the underexposed regions and reduce the saturated regions, an automatic and effective method is proposed for the multi-exposure determination of the DFP system. During the whole process, only one unsaturated image must be captured preliminarily, which could establish an adaptive strategy based on the intensity value distribution function. Raw absolute phase maps captured with different exposure times are synthesized at the pixel level for phase retrieval and 3D reconstruction. To evaluate the effectiveness of our method, a high dynamic range method and a global optimal exposure method are introduced for comparison. Verification experiments demonstrate that our method performs better for the 3D reconstruction results of complex surfaces with a large reflectivity range.