Image Formation: - The Two Parts of The Image Formation Process
Image Formation: - The Two Parts of The Image Formation Process
-2-
• Camera Geometry
- The simplest device to form an image of a 3D scene on a 2D surface is the
"pinhole"
camera.
- Rays of light pass through a "pinhole" and form an inverted image of the object
on
the image plane.
• Camera Optics
- In practice, the aperture must be larger to admit more light.
- Lens are placed in the aperture to focus the bundle of rays from each scene point
onto the corresponding point in the image plane.
-3-
• Diffraction and Pinhole Optics
- If we use a wide pinhole, light from the source spreads across the image (i.e., not
properly focused), making it blurry.
- If we narrow the pinhole, only a small amount of light is let in.
* the image sharpness is limited by diffraction.
* when light passes through a small aperture, it does not travel in a straight line.
* it is scattered in many direction (this is a quantum effect).
- In general, the aim of using lens is to duplicate the pinhole geometry without
resorting
to undesirable small apertures.
• Human Vision
- At high light levels, pupil (aperture) is small and blurring is due to diffraction.
- At low light levels, pupil is open and blurring is due to lens imperfections.
-4-
• CCD Cameras
- An array of tiny solid state cells convert light energy into electrical charge.
- Manufactured on chips typically measuring about 1cm x 1cm (for a 512x512
array,
each element has a real width of roughly 0.001 cm).
- The output of a CCD array is a continuous electric signal (video signal) which is
generated by scanning the photo-sensors in a given order (e.g., line by line) and
reading
out their voltages.
• Frame grabber
- The video signal is sent to an electronic device called the frame grabber.
- The frame grabber digitizes the signal into a 2D, rectangular array N x M of
integer
values, stored in the frame buffer.
-5-
CCD array and frame buffer
- In a CCD camera, the physical image plane is the CCD array of nxm rectangular
grid of photo-sensors.
- The pixel image plane (frame buffer) is an array of NxM integer values (pixels).
- The position of the same point on the image plane will be different if measured in
CCD elements (x, y) or image pixels (xim, yim).
- In general, n N and m M; assuming that the origin in both cases is the upper
left corner we have:
xim
N
n
x yim
M
m
y
where (xim, yim) are the coordinates of the point in the pixel plane and (x, y) are the
coordinates of the point in the CCD plane.
- In general, it is convenient to assume that the CCD elements are always in one-
toone
correspondence with the image pixels.
- Units in each case:
(xim, yim) is measured in pixels
(x, y) is measured, e.g., in millimeters.
-6-
Reference Frames
analysis. - Five reference frames are needed for general problems in 3D scene
-9-
• Transformations between frames
Object Coordinates (3D)
World Coordinates (3D)
Camera Coordinates (3D)
Image Plane Coordinates (2D)
Pixel Coordinates (2D, int)
extrinsic camera
intrinsic camera
parameters
parameters