Joint camera blur and pose estimation from aliased data

J Opt Soc Am A Opt Image Sci Vis. 2018 Apr 1;35(4):639-651. doi: 10.1364/JOSAA.35.000639.

Abstract

A joint-estimation algorithm is presented that enables simultaneous camera blur and pose estimation from a known calibration target in the presence of aliasing. Specifically, a parametric maximum-likelihood (ML) point-spread function estimate is derived for characterizing a camera's optical imperfections through the use of a calibration target in an otherwise loosely controlled environment. The imaging perspective, ambient-light levels, target reflectance, detector gain and offset, quantum efficiency, and read-noise levels are all treated as nuisance parameters. The Cramér-Rao bound is derived, and simulations demonstrate that the proposed estimator achieves near optimal mean squared error performance. The proposed method is applied to experimental data to validate the fidelity of the forward models as well as to establish the utility of the resulting ML estimates for both system identification and subsequent image restoration.