A Curve-Fitting Method for Correcting Radial Distortion

This paper presents a new method for correcting radial distortion. It makes use of a model plane including 3D lines and originally demonstrates that the distorted image of a 3D line is a circular arc. After obtained the circle equation, the distortion parameter and the supposed undistorted image are computed simultaneously. Then the camera model is equivalent to ideal pinhole camera and can be calibrated using conventional plane-based calibration algorithm. This paper successfully decouples the estimation of the radial distortion from the estimation of other camera intrinsic parameters. Experimental results verify the correctness and robustness of our method.