Binary defocusing technique based on complementary decoding with unconstrained dual projectors

Binary defocusing technique can effectively break the limitation of hardware speed, which has been widely used in the real-time three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction. In addition, fusion technique can reduce captured images count for a 3D scene, which helps to improve real-time performance. Unfortunately, it is difficult for binary defocusing technique and fusion technique working simultaneously. To this end, our research established a novel system framework consisting of dual projectors and a camera, where the position and posture of the dual projectors are not strictly required. And, the dual projectors can adjust defocusing level independently. Based on this, this paper proposed a complementary decoding method with unconstrained dual projectors. The core idea is that low-resolution information is employed for high-resolution phase unwrapping. For this purpose, we developed the low-resolution depth extraction strategy based on periodic space-time coding patterns and the method from the low-resolution order to high-resolution order of fringe. Finally, experimental results demonstrated the performance of our proposed method, and the proposed method only requires three images for a 3D scene, as well as has strong robustness, expansibility, and implementation.