Measurement of a cross-sectional profile of a thread gauge using a sinusoidally vibrating interference pattern.

A sinusoidally vibrating interference pattern (SVIP) is used as an exact spatial scale in order to measure a cross-sectional profile of a thread gauge. The SVIP is projected on the thread gauge surface, and lights diffracted and reflected from the end points of the thread gauge surface are extracted by spatial frequency filtering in an imaging system to make an image of the end points whose positions are decided by the peak positions of amplitude distributions in the image. The coordinates of the end points or the cross-sectional profile of the thread gauge is obtained from the phases measured at the positions of the end points, phase distribution of the SVIP on a CCD image sensor, and the pixel positions of the CCD image sensor.