Investigation on Image Quality of Smartphone Cameras as Compared with a DSLR Camera by Using Target Image Edges

Abstract

This paper presents a set of methods to evaluate the image quality of smartphone cameras as compared with that of a DSLR camera. In recent years, smartphone cameras have been used broadly for many purposes. As the performance of smartphone cameras has been enhanced considerably, they can be considered to be used for precise mapping instead of metric cameras. To evaluate the possibility, we tested the quality of one DSLR camera and 3 smartphone cameras. In the first step, we compare the amount of lens distortions inherent in each camera using camera calibration sheet images. Then, we acquired target sheet images, extracted reference lines from them and evaluated the geometric quality of smartphone cameras based on the amount of errors occurring in fitting a straight line to observed points. In addition, we present a method to evaluate the radiometric quality of the images taken by each camera based on planar fitting errors. Also, we propose a method to quantify the geometric quality of the selected camera using edge displacements observed in target sheet images. The experimental results show that the geometric and radiometric qualities of