Mathematical foundations of photogrammetry

Abstract

Photogrammetry uses photographic cameras to obtain information about the 3D world. The basic principle of photogrammetric measurement is straightforward: recording a light ray in a photographic image corresponds to observing a direction from the camera to the 3D scene point where the light was reflected or emitted. From this relation, procedures have been derived to orient cameras relative to each other or relative to a 3D object coordinate frame and to reconstruct unknown 3D objects through triangulation. The chapter provides a compact, gentle introduction to the fundamental geometric relations that underly image-based 3D measurement.