Camera Calibration Methods Evaluation Procedure for Images Rectification and 3D Reconstruction

Camera calibration and images rectification are two necessary steps in most 3D reconstruction methods using image acquisition. This paper proposes an evaluation procedure for camera calibration methods for the case of 3D reconstruction using rectified multi-stereo images. The evaluation is based on the accuracy of the rectification and of the 3D reconstruction which are directly related to the calibration precision. Three methods are thus compared: Faugeras-Toscani, Zhang and a robust calibration algorithm. The procedure can be applied for computer vision systems with an arbitrary number of cameras and for any other calibration method. We show that, although the three methods provide significantly different intrinsic and stereo system parameter estimations, the rectified images of the planar target that we use for evaluation are relatively coherent and lead to close 3D reconstruction errors