CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Lens distortions are long-known phenomena that prohibit use of simple pinhole camera models in the most of the computer vision applications. Being the most stubborn type of lens aberrations, they do not influence quality of the image, but have significant impact on image geometry.Several types of lens distortions exist, however, radial distortion is usually the most severe part of the total lens distortion, especially when inexpensivewide-angle lenses are used. Effect of radial distortion on image geometry. There are two major types of radial distortion. When image points get displaced from its desired location to the position closer to the optical axis (negative displacement),barrel distortion occurs. Alternatively, image points can get displaced to the position further away from the optical axis (positive displacement), in this case pinchusion distortion occurs. Barrel distortion is common in wide angle lenses and it therefore dominates the distortion-related research, as far as computer vision is considered.

1.1 RADIAL DISTORTION

Although distortion can be irregular or follow many patterns, the most commonly encountered distortions are radially symmetric, or approximately so, arising from the symmetry of a photographic lens. The radial distortion can usually be classified as one of two main types.

1.1.1 Barrel distortion In "barrel distortion", image magnification decreases with distance from the optical axis. The apparent effect is that of an image which has been mapped around a sphere (or sphere).Fisheye lens, which take hemispherical views, utilize this type of distortion as a way to map an infinitely wide object plane into a finite image area.

Figure 1.1 Barrel Distortion

1.1.2 Pincushion distortion

In "pincushion distortion", image magnification increases with the distance from the optical axis The visible effect is that lines that do not go through the centre of the image are bowed inwards, towards the centre of the image, like pincushion.A certain amount of pincushion distortion is often found with visual optical instruments, e.g. binoculars, where it serves to eliminate the global effect.

Figure 1.2 Pincushion Distortion

A mixture of both types, sometimes referred to as mustache distortion (moustache distortion) or complex distortion, is less common but not rare. It starts out as barrel distortion close to the image center and gradually turns into pincushion distortion towards the image periphery, making horizontal lines in the top half of the frame look like a handlebar mustache.

Mathematically, barrel and pincushion distortion are quadratic, meaning they increase as the square of distance from the center. In mustache distortion the quartic(degree 4) term is significant: in the center, the degree 2 barrel distortion is dominant, while at the edge the degree 4 distortion in the pincushion direction dominates. Other distortions are in principle possible, pincushion in center and barrel at the edge, or higher order distortions (degree 6, degree 8) but do not generally occur in practical lenses, and higher order distortions are small relative to the main barrel and pincushion effects.

1.2 OCCURRENCE OF RADIAL DISTORTION

In photography, distortion is particularly associated with zoom lenses, particularly large-range zooms, but may also be found in prime lenses, and depends on focal distance .Barrel distortion may be found in wide-angle lenses, and is often seen at the wide-angle end of zoom lenses, while telephoto distortion is often seen in older or low-end telephoto lenses. Mustache distortion is observed particularly on the wide end of some zooms, with certain retro focus lenses, and more recently on largerange zooms such as the Nikon 18200 mm.

In order to understand these distortions, it should be remembered that these are radial defects; the optical systems in question have rotational symmetry (omitting non-radial defects), so correct test image would be a set of concentric circles having even separationlike a shooter's target. It will then be observed that these common distortions actually imply a nonlinear radius mapping from the object to the image: What is seemingly pincushion distortion, is actually simply an exaggerated radius mapping for large radii in comparison with small radii. A graph showing radius transformations (from object to image) will be steeper in the upper (rightmost) end. Conversely, barrel distortion is actually a diminished radius mapping for large radii in comparison with small radii.

1.3 DISTORTION IN ENDOSCOPIC IMAGES

Minimally Invasive Therapy (MIT) is increasingly becoming popular because of the use of natural or artificial orifices of the body for surgical procedures, which minimizes the destruction of healthy organs and tissues. Electronic videoendoscopy has become one of the commonly accepted forms of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, due to the advent of miniature CCD cameras and associated microelectronics.

Videoendoscopes facilitate observation, documentation, and electrical manipulation of the images of the internal structure of the gastrointestinal tract. In these endoscopes, cameras with a wide viewing angle lens (fish-eyelens) are used to enhance the imaging capability, which permits the capturing of larger field in a single image. However, it has been noted that the images obtained from electronic endo-scopes show barrel-type spatial distortion, due to wide-angle configuration of the camera lens. Barrel distortion introduces nonlinear changes in the image, due to which, image area near the distortion center are compressed less, while areas farther from the center are compressed more. Because of this, the outer areas of the image look significantly smaller than their actual size. This inhomogeneous image compression introduces significant errors in the results obtained during feature extraction. Continuous estimation of quantitative parameters, such as area and perimeter, is of considerable importance while performing clinical endoscopy. Unless the distortion is corrected, estimation errors could be very large. In addition, the distortion causes complications while using token matching techniques for pattern recognition.