Camera calibration method based on optimal polarization angle

The accurate estimation of camera internal and external parameters is one of the keys to high-precision camera calibration. At present, the mainstream Zhang's calibration method requires the use of a checkerboard to achieve high-precision calibration result. Therefore, the precise extraction of the pixel coordinates at the corner points on the checkerboard is one of the key technologies. The traditional methods are to improve the corner extraction algorithm, but ignore the imaging process of the calibration images. It is difficult to detect and eliminate the high-light regions in the process of calibrating image, and the existence of high-light regions will cause low accuracy of camera calibration. Therefore, a camera calibration method based on optimal polarization information is proposed in this paper. The method first uses a Stokes variable linear feedback through a CCD camera equipped with a polarizer to obtain a checkerboard calibration image at an optimal polarization angle in different spatial positions. Then use the sub-pixel level detection algorithm and Gaussian fitting method to locate the corner points in the image and to solve the sub-pixel coordinates of the corner points precisely. At last, the two-dimensional pixel coordinates of the corner points in each checkerboard image are extracted to perform camera calibration. The experimental results show that the coordinates of corner points of calibration plate image based on the optimal polarization angle have about 1 pixel difference compared with the coordinates of the calibration plate corner points under natural illumination, and the slopes between the parallel lines of the fitted are closer, meet the high precision calibration requirement of camera.