An investigation of vision system design factors which affect the performance of camera calibration

Summary form only given. The utilization of image synthesis to aid in the evaluation of image-processing algorithms still remains a largely unexplored area. A study of critical design parameters using synthetic images, in which scene information (including source direction and distribution, object geometry and surface reflectance) is known precisely, provides a valuable tool to evaluate the algorithm performance, since it leads to a better understanding of the magnitude and type of errors incurred. Numerical simulations of image capture can differentiate and report minute changes in design factors much more accurately than a physical prototype; therefore, the results presented here suggest that a study of synthetic images can be effectively used to investigate the effect of design factors on the performance of image-processing algorithms. Finally, such a technique facilitates a means to correct the apparent errors introduced by similar variations in captured images.