Wavefront fitting and comparison of camera aberrations using Zernike circle polynomials

Zernike polynomials are in widespread use for wavefront analysis because of their representation of classical aberrations. This paper presents a method to investigate wavefront aberrations which does not require complicated and expensive wavefront sensors. Images of checkerboard pattern are captured using mobile phone cameras, CCTV camera, Firewire camera, Handy cam and Stereo camera and wavefront is constructed using displacement in the grid corners of checkerboard patterns. This wavefront is fitted into Zernike circle polynomials and Zernike coefficients are computed using Gaussian elimination method. The computed Zernike polynomials and Zernike coefficients are further utilized to compare the aberrations of different cameras. The experiment and simulations confirm that displacement in the grid corners of the checkerboard pattern can be treated as a wavefront and fitted to Zernike polynomials. Stereo camera is also investigated for both raw and rectified set of images.