ABSTRACT
Optical interferometers can be used to measure a wide range of physical quantities. The phase unwrapping technique shown is one of the simplest methods for unwrapping a good or nearly consistent smooth phase map. The technique consists of integrating phase differences along a scanning path. This chapter utilizes the algorithm to unwrap inconsistent phase maps corrupted by a small amount of noise. The least-squares technique was first introduced by Ghiglia et al. to unwrap inconsistent phase maps. To regularize the phase unwrapping problem, it is necessary to find a suitable merit function that uses at least two terms that contribute to constraining the unwrapped field we are seeking. These terms are related by the following factors: fidelity between the estimated function and the observations, and prior knowledge about the spatial behavior of the unwrapped phase. The chapter discusses the problem of unwrapping undersampled phase maps.
