A novel quality map algorithm for wavelet transform profilometry is pr esented to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the phase unwrapping.1-D wavelet transform is first ly applied to the deformed fringe pattern to derive the wrapped phase and the instantaneous frequency.The quality map as the guidance for phase unwrapping is then established with two factors.The one is the absolute differe nce between the instantaneous frequency and the fringe carrier frequency.The other is the change of instantan eous frequency over adjacent pixels.The value of the quality map determines the quality of the wrapped phase. The smaller the value,the higher reliability of the wrapped phase.Then the quality map is divided into tw o parts by the pre-set threshold. The scan-line algorithm is used to unwrap the phase within the low-quality ar eas while the flood-fill algorithm is used within the high-quality areas.The proposed method is verified by static experiments a nd dynamic experiments.The quality map can precisely indicate the areas where noise,shadows or fringe abru pt changes exist.Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the flood-fill phase unwrapping algorithm in terms of accuracy and computational time.The proposed algorithm is suitable for dynamic measurement where a large number of fringe patterns require accurate phase unwrapping.