The pinhole camera model

The pinhole camera model

Calibration
OpenCV provides several algorithms to help us compute these intrinsic parameters. The actual calibration is done via cvCalibrateCamera2().

Rotation Matrix and Translation Vector

 A rotation is equivalent to introducing a new description of a points location in a different coordinate system. Rotating the coordinate system by an angle is equivalent to counterrotating our target point around the origin of that coordinate system by the same angle .

 The representation of a two-dimensional rotation as matrix multiplication is shown as If we rotate around the x-, y-, and z-axes in sequence with respective rotation angles , , and , the result is a total rotation matrix R that is given by the product of the three matrices Rx(), Ry(), and Rz(), where

Chessboards
In principle, any appropriately characterized object could be used as a calibration object, yet the practical choice is a regular pattern such as a chessboard or a box covered with markers but flat chessboard patterns are much easier to deal with.

 Focal to Point Ratio There is a very important concept in computer vision, called the focal length to pixel length ratio, or focal to point ratio (f/p ratio), where f is the focal length and p is the measure of each pixel. The f/p ratio relates the parameters of the image formed within the lens and the image on the outside world. Figure 1 shows the relevant parameters and their relationship. Line AB is a reference line on the wall with distance d1. Line CD is the projection in the camera of line AB. Line CD has a distance of d2. The horizontal distance between the optical center (O) and the wall is d and the horizontal distance between the image plane and the optical center is f. Equation (1) relates all these parameters.

REFERENCES
Book Learning OpenCV by Gary Bradski and Adrian Kaehler Paper of Stereoscopic vision for depth perception by Luis Copertari published in august 2007,volume 3 Paper of Depth Estimation using Monocular and Stereo Cues by Ashutosh Saxena, Jamie Schulte and Andrew Y. Ng.