A scanning moire method is a moire method in which the master grating is replaced by the scanning lines of a television camera. In the present paper, the principle of moire pattern appearance, the effects of thinning out of scanning lines and the relation between moire fringes and strain are studied by the sampling theorem. I)f a deformed model grating is sampled by a television camera and it is thinned out properly by using image processing system, the strain distribution with wide strain range can be analyzed from one picture.