Video image mosaic implement based on planar-mirror-based catadioptric system

Abstract

Planar-mirror-based catadioptric method is one of the most hot topics in recent years. To overcome the disadvantages of the planar-mirror-based catadioptric panoramic camera, described by Nalwa (1996, 2001, 2000), such as the requirement for high-precision optical device designing and the stitching lines in the resulting images, we proposed a planar-mirror-based video image mosaic system with high precision for designing. Firstly, we designed a screw nut on our system, which can be adjusted to locate the viewpoints of the cameras' mirror images at a single point approximately. It provides a method for those who have difficulties in their designing and manufacturing for high precision. Then, after the image distortion correction and cylinder projection transforms, we can stitch the images to get a wide field of view image by template matching algorithm. Finally, nonlinear weighting fusion is adopted to eliminate the stitching line effectively. The experimental results show that our system has good characteristics such as video rate capture, high resolution, no stitching line and without affection by the depth of field of view. © 2012 The Author(s).