Camera self-calibration with varying intrinsic parameters by an unknown three-dimensional scene

Abstract

This work proposes a method of camera self-calibration having varying intrinsic parameters from a sequence of images of an unknown 3D object. The projection of two points of the 3D scene in the image planes is used with fundamental matrices to determine the projection matrices. The present approach is based on the formulation of a nonlinear cost function from the determination of a relationship between two points of the scene and their projections in the image planes. The resolution of this function enables us to estimate the intrinsic parameters of different cameras. The strong point of the present approach is clearly seen in the minimization of the three constraints of a self-calibration system (a pair of images, 3D scene, any camera): The use of a single pair of images provides fewer equations, which minimizes the execution time of the program, the use of a 3D scene reduces the planarity constraints, and the use of any camera eliminates the constraints of cameras having constant parameters. The experiment results on synthetic and real data are presented to demonstrate the performance of the present approach in terms of accuracy, simplicity, stability, and convergence.