Fringe projection techniques: whither we are

During recent years, the use of fringe projection techniques for generating three-dimensional (3D) surface information has become one of the most active research areas in optical metrol-ogy. Its applications range from measuring the 3D shape of MEMS components to the measurement of flatness of large panels (2.5 m ×.45 m). The technique has found various ap-plications in diverse fields: biomedical applications such as 3D intra-oral dental measurements [1], non-invasive 3D imag-ing and monitoring of vascular wall deformations [2], human body shape measurement for shape guided radiotherapy treat-ment [3, 4], lower back deformation measurement [5], detection and monitoring of scoliosis [6], inspection of wounds [7, 8] and skin topography measurement for use in cosmetology [9, 10, 11]; industrial and scientific applications such as char-acterization of MEMS components [12, 13], vibration analy