Calibrationmethod for a central catadioptric-perspective camera system

A central catadioptric-perspective camera system is widely used nowadays. A critical problem is that current calibration methods cannot determine the extrinsic parameters between the central catadioptric camera and a perspective camera effectively. We present a novel calibration method for a central catadioptric-perspective camera system, in which the central catadioptric camera has a hyperbolic mirror. Two cameras are used to capture images of one calibration pattern at different spatial positions. A virtual camera is constructed at the origin of the central catadioptric camera and faced toward the calibration pattern. The transformation between the virtual camera and the calibration pattern could be computed first and the extrinsic parameters between the central catadioptric camera and the calibration pattern could be obtained. Three-dimensional reconstruction results of the calibration pattern show a high accuracy and validate the feasibility of our method. © 2012 Optical Society of America.