Recovering data from noisy fringe patterns from a portable digital speckle pattern interferometer for in-situ inspection of a painting hanging on the wall.

We report on a method for recovering data from a simple portable Digital Speckle Pattern Interferometer intended for utilization outside of laboratory conditions, without anti-vibration devices. We used the system for monitoring the structural behavior of a painting on wood, hanging on a wall. In such a situation, fringes, produced by the object displacements, were affected by random distortions caused by environment noise. However a satisfactory number of undistorted, or barely distorted, fringe patterns were found and utilized for processing. We performed fast continuous acquisitions of consecutive interferograms, picking usable fringe patterns out of a large amount of recorded frames. This is the crucial task in the measurement procedure. For this purpose we developed a software routine, based on jointly analysis of both spectral content and fringe image sharpne ss, as selection rule. From the selected frames, by using a simple approach based on Hilbert Transform and Phase Unwrapping, via MAx-flow (PUMA) algorithm, we were able to evaluate the painting whole structure deformations, caused by environmental thermohygrometric fluctuations.