A Simple Method of Radial Distortion Correction with Centre of Distortion Estimation

This paper presents a new simple method to determine the distortion function of camera systems suffering from radial lens distortion. Neither information about the intrinsic camera parameters nor 3D-point correspondences are required. It is based on single image and uses the constraint, that straight lines in the 3D world project to circular arcs in the image plane, under the single parameter Division Model. Most of former approaches to correct the radial distortion are based on the collinearity of undistorted points. The proposed method in this paper, however, is based on the conclusion that distorted points are concyclic and uses directly the distorted points not undistorted points, therefore it should be more robust. It also computes the centre of radial distortion, which is important in obtaining optimal results. The results of experimental measurements on synthetic and real data are presented and discussed.