Epipolar geometry via rectification of spherical images

Abstract

For computation of the epipolar geometry from central-omni-directional images, the use of the spherical camera model is essential. This is because the central-omnidirectional cameras are universally expressed as the spherical camera model when the intrinsic parameters of the cameras are calibrated. Geometrically, for corresponding points between two spherical images, there exists the same epipolar constraint as the conventional pinhole-camera model. Therefore, it is possible to use the conventional eight-point algorithm for recovering camera motion and 3D objects from two spherical images. In this paper, using the geometric properties on rotation of the spheres, we propose a method of the accurate computation based on the rectification of the spherical-camera images via the conventional eight-point algorithm. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.