IMAGE ACQUISITION CONSTRAINTS FOR PANORAMIC FRAME CAMERA IMAGING

Abstract. The paper describes an approach to quantify the amount of projective error produced by an offset of projection centres in a panoramic imaging workflow. We have limited this research to such panoramic workflows in which several sub-images using planar image sensor are taken and then stitched together as a large panoramic image mosaic. The aim is to simulate how large the offset can be before it introduces significant error to the dataset. The method uses geometrical analysis to calculate the error in various cases. Constraints for shooting distance, focal length and the depth of the area of interest are taken into account. Considering these constraints, it is possible to safely use even poorly calibrated panoramic camera rig with noticeable offset in projection centre locations. The aim is to create datasets suited for photogrammetric reconstruction. Similar constraints can be used also for finding recommended areas from the image planes for automatic feature matching and thus improve stitching of sub-images into full panoramic mosaics.

The results are mainly designed to be used with long focal length cameras where the offset of projection centre of sub-images can seem to be significant but on the other hand the shooting distance is also long. We show that in such situations the error introduced by the offset of the projection centres results only in negligible error when stitching a metric panorama. Even if the main use of the results is with cameras of long focal length, they are feasible for all focal lengths.