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Optimizing PTZ camera calibration from two images

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Abstract

In this paper, we address the problem of calibrating an active pan–tilt–zoom (PTZ) camera. In this regard, we make three main contributions: first, for the general camera rotation, we provide a novel solution that yields four independent constraints from only two images, by directly decomposing the infinite homography using a series of Givens rotations. Second, for a camera varying its focal length, we present a solution for the degenerate cases of pure pan and pure tilt that occur very frequently in practical applications of PTZ cameras. Third, we derive a new optimized error function for pure rotation or pan–tilt rotation, which plays a similar role as the epipolar constraint in a freely moving camera, in terms of characterizing the reprojection error of point correspondences. Our solutions and analysis are thoroughly validated and tested on both synthetic and real data, whereby the new geometric error function is shown to outperform existing methods in terms of accuracy and noise resilience.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

    Imran N. Junejo

  2. University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA

    Hassan Foroosh

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  1. Imran N. Junejo
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  2. Hassan Foroosh
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Correspondence to Imran N. Junejo.

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Junejo, I.N., Foroosh, H. Optimizing PTZ camera calibration from two images. Machine Vision and Applications 23, 375–389 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00138-011-0326-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00138-011-0326-z

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