Abstract
ESPI is a noncontact, nondestructive and relatively fast inspection method. For these reasons ESPI is being applied as a valuable tool in the nondestructive evaluation of structural components. Phase shifting ESPI is used more effectively than the traditional ESPI because spatial resolution of small object displacements are improved and numerical phase values are obtained for all pixels in the image. Consequently the quantitative measurement of deformation is possible. ESPI fringe patterns are contaminated with high levels of speckle noise. Therefore the phase image is to be smoothed to remove the noise and obtain a better signal-to-noise ratio. In this study, smoothing is done by phase shifting convolution to avoid smoothing errors close to the 2$\pi$ phase ambiguities in the deformation phase image, and median filter is used as a smoothing filter.