  Fringe pattern based measurement techniques are the state-of-the-art in
full-field optical metrology. They are crucial both in macroscale, e.g., fringe
projection profilometry, and microscale, e.g., label-free quantitative phase
microscopy. Accurate estimation of the local fringe orientation map can
significantly facilitate the measurement process on various ways, e.g., fringe
filtering (denoising), fringe pattern boundary padding, fringe skeletoning
(contouring/following/tracking), local fringe spatial frequency (fringe period)
estimation and fringe pattern phase demodulation. Considering all of that the
accurate, robust and preferably automatic estimation of local fringe
orientation map is of high importance. In this paper we propose novel numerical
solution for local fringe orientation map estimation based on convolutional
neural network and deep learning called DeepOrientation. Numerical simulations
and experimental results corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed
DeepOrientation comparing it with the representative of the classical approach
to orientation estimation called combined plane fitting/gradient method. The
example proving the effectiveness of DeepOrientation in fringe pattern
analysis, which we present in this paper is the application of DeepOrientation
for guiding the phase demodulation process in Hilbert spiral transform. In
particular, living HeLa cells quantitative phase imaging outcomes verify the
method as an important asset in label-free microscopy.
