Discrete chirp Fourier transform based analysis of reconstructed interference fields in digital holographic interferometry

In digital holographic interferometry, the information on the measurand is encoded in the phase of the reconstructed interference fields. This letter introduces a new method for the analysis of the reconstructed interference fields using discrete chirp Fourier transform (DCFT). In the proposed method, the interference phase to be estimated is modelled as a piecewise polynomial signal. Each row of the reconstructed interference field is subsequently divided into several segments, and a parametric estimation of the phase using DCFT is performed in each segment. We show that the phase estimated in this manner is accurate and continuous, thereby enabling us to bypass the commonly followed practices of filtering and 2-D phase unwrapping. Simulation and experimental results substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed method.