ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to a review of Fourier fringe demodulation techniques, which were initially developed for spatial carrier fringe analysis and later came to be applied for a wider class of spatiotemporal fringe signals. Among others, the focus is on the technique for fringe analysis, known by the name Fourier fringe analysis (FFA) or the Fourier transform method (FTM). In the early 1980s, the generic FTM was proposed and experimentally demonstrated [7,8], initially as a means for demodulating a fringe pattern with a spatial carrier frequency. Since then, through the three decades of active participation of many scientists and engineers all over the world, the FTM has been critically analyzed, continuously improved, and refined and has found new application areas [9-12]. Starting from a brief review of the principle of the generic FTM, the features, the strength, and the weakness of the FTM as compared with other techniques are described. Then, some typical applications of the FTM are introduced, and it is shown how the advantages of the FTM are exploited in these practical applications. Part of this chapter is based on my review articles published elsewhere [11,12].
