Non-iterative method for camera calibration

Opt Express. 2015 Sep 7;23(18):23992-4003. doi: 10.1364/OE.23.023992.

Abstract

This paper presents a new and effective technique to calibrate a camera without nonlinear iteration optimization. To this end, the centre-of-distortion is accurately estimated firstly. Based on the radial distortion division model, point correspondences between model plane and its image were used to compute the homography and distortion coefficients afterwards. Once the homographies of calibration images are obtained, the camera intrinsic parameters are solved analytically. All the solution techniques applied in this calibration process are non-iterative that do not need any initial guess, with no risk of local minima. Moreover, estimation of the distortion coefficients and intrinsic parameters could be successfully decoupled, yielding the more stable and reliable result. Both simulative and real experiments have been carried out to show that the proposed method is reliable and effective. Without nonlinear iteration optimization, the proposed method is computationally efficient and can be applied to real-time online calibration.