External verification of the bundle adjustment in photogrammetric software using the damped bundle adjustment toolbox

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the Matlab-based Damped Bundle Adjustment Toolbox (DBAT) can be used to provide independent verification of the BA computation of two popular software-PhotoModeler (PM) and PhotoScan (PS). For frame camera data sets with lens distortion, DBAT is able to reprocess and replicate subsets of PM results with high accuracy. For lens-distortion-free data sets, DBAT can furthermore provide comparative results between PM and PS. Data sets for the discussed projects are available from the authors. The use of an external verification tool such as DBAT will enable users to get an independent verification of the computations of their software. In addition, DBAT can provide computation of quality parameters such as estimated standard deviations, correlation between parameters, etc., something that should be part of best practice for any photogrammetric software. Finally, as the code is free and open-source, users can add computations of their own.