This paper presents a simple algorithm for estimating phase shifts from only three interferograms. In it, the fringe pattern differences are computed first in order to remove the background component, and then the variances and further the standard deviations (SDs) of fringe pattern differences are calculated. The phase shifts are estimated, by using the law of cosines, from a triangle whose lengths of sides are the SDs just calculated. This algorithm offers several advantages over others, e.g., being efficient, easy to implement, accurate, and less sensitive to noise. Numerical simulations and an experiment are performed to demonstrate its validity.
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