Calibrating camera radial distortion with cross-ratio invariability

The calibration of camera distortion plays an important role in the field of industrial machine vision application. In this paper, a novel approach for calibrating camera radial distortion is presented based on cross-ratio invariability for perspective projection. Assumed to be with one-order radial distortion, the image coordinates and the cross-ratio of only four collinear points in space are needed in this approach. The cross-ratio, easily known from a calibration target, is identical with that of the four corresponding image points. This is called the cross-ratio invariability for perspective projection. A monadic two-order equation is built based on the cross-ratio invariability, which gives an accurate solution to radial distortion coefficients. A digital simulation and a practical image correction prove this approach to be simple, accurate, efficient and time saving. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.