Epipolar geometry for prism-based single-lens stereovision

In order to simplify the design and implementation of a stereo vision system, prism has been used to capture stereo images with a single camera. This kind of system not only provides advantages over traditional two-camera stereo, but also reduces the complexity and cost of acquiring stereoscopic image. This paper investigated the characteristics of epipolar geometry for a single-lens prism-based stereovision. The prism was considered as a single optical lens. By analyzing each plane individually and then combining them together, an affine transformation matrix which can express the relationship between an object point and its image was derived. Then, the homography between object point and its image was established. Finally, the epipolar geometry as well as the epipolar rectification method was proposed. Experimental results verify that rectification of the image pair based on our proposed model can achieve better performance with much less geometric distortion.