Self-calibrating structured light three-dimensional imaging method with fringe projection
In one sentenceVibration slowly shifts a camera–projector system’s extrinsic parameters. This method corrects them by jointly optimising camera, projector and the measured object’s 3D points, without interrupting measurement and with less reliance on high-precision targets.
The problem
Industrial inspection asks for 3D measurement that is efficient, economical and highly precise, and structured-light 3D measurement meets these requirements. In a monocular camera–projector system that reconstructs surfaces by phase-shifting fringe projection, long-term operational stability is the key bottleneck for measurement accuracy: external factors such as vibration make the system’s extrinsic parameters move slowly, which weakens the triangulation constraints and lowers the accuracy of the measurement results.
How it works
The paper develops a self-calibrating fringe-projection 3D imaging technique that integrates bundle adjustment. The surface of the object being reconstructed becomes a constraint in the calibration itself.
- Drifting extrinsics. Vibration slowly moves the extrinsic parameters of the camera–projector system, weakening the triangulation constraints.
- Initial values. The independent calibration parameters of the camera and of the projector serve as the initial values.
- Joint optimisation (the bundle adjustment). The surface point cloud of the object being reconstructed is added to the optimisation as a constraint, giving a collaborative optimisation model of the camera parameters, the projector parameters and the scene’s 3D points.
- Corrected extrinsics. With this model the system’s extrinsic parameters are corrected rapidly and accurately.
Results
This page summarises the paper’s abstract. The full paper is available from the publisher: doi.org/10.1117/12.3114025.
Cite
@inproceedings{sun2026self,
title={Self-calibrating structured light three-dimensional imaging method with fringe projection},
author={Sun, Jingying and Zhang, Haojun and Lu, Lei and Su, Zhilong and Pan, Wei},
booktitle={Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series},
volume={14185},
pages={1418516},
year={2026},
doi={10.1117/12.3114025}
}