Digital speckle pattern interferometry using spatial phase shifting: influence of intensity and phase gradients

Spatial phase shifting technique in digital speckle pattern interferometry (DSPI) and digital shearography (DS) provides the phase information due to the object displacement from two images, one stored before and other after loading. The technique needs a carrier fringe system. The double aperture mask in front of the imaging system is one of the methods for introducing the spatial carrier frequency for phase evaluation. The size of the apertures and their separation are important criteria to obtain appropriate phase shift/column within the desired size of the speckle for phase retrieval. The assumptions of constant intensity and phase on adjacent pixels of the camera while calculating phase in spatial phase shifting (SPS) are not met as the speckled object wave contains intensity and phase gradients, resulting in distortions in the calculated phase profiles. In this paper we discuss a strategy to overcome these problems. The contrast of the correlation fringe obtained using this approach is much improved. It also eliminates the distortion in the unwrapped phase map like wave ripples. The experimental results on an edge clamped circular plate loaded at the center are presented.