Improved distortion correction method and applications for large aperture infrared tracking cameras

摘要

Accurate distortion correction is especially crucial for applications involving quantitative measurements such as on-orbit geometric positioning of remoting sensing cameras, depth measurement from stereoscopy, and target tracking and recognition from images. However, the conventional complicated correction methods and the unsatisfied results greatly limit their application prospects, especially in the aerospace field. In this paper, we propose an improved distortion correction method (IDCM) for large aperture infrared tracking cameras, addressing the distortion model and the principle point and distance with high-precision measurement points in the focal plane. Experimental results showed that the distortion errors corrected by the proposed method were 0.26 pixels in a near-infrared image and 0.19 pixels in a short-wavelength infrared image. These corrected distortion errors are better than that corrected by the two-dimensional Lagrange interpolation method (TDLIM) of 0.36 pixels in a near-infrared image and 0.29 pixels in a short-wavelength infrared image, and the conventional distortion model (CDM) of 0.54 pixels in a near-infrared image and 0.64 pixels in a short-wavelength infrared image, respectively.