Extrapolating distortion correction with local measurements for space-based multi-module splicing large-format infrared cameras

Abstract

Conventional distortion correction methods with the classical models, including radial, decentering, and thin prism distortions and with the interpolation template, depend heavily on the evenly distributed measurement data on the entire focal plane. However, owing to the restricted cubage of the vacuum tank and the large size of the assembled camera, there is no more extra space for the amounted large-format camera to adjust with the 2D turntable during laboratory vacuum experiment, which, accordingly, makes the collected measurement points gathered in just one module of the focal plane and eventually results in poor correction accuracy of the mentioned approaches. Here, in terms of the problems above, an extrapolating distortion correction method with local measurements for space-based multi-module splicing large-format infrared cameras was proposed in this paper. Benefiting from the polynomial model not being affected by the distribution of data, a third-order polynomial model adopted for distortion correction is solved by using local measurements and extrapolated reasonably, which guarantees the global camera calibration. Experimental results show that the mean distortion error can be corrected within 0.5 pixels. This method overcoming the deficiency of local test points can effectively improve the correction accuracy of the large-format camera and provide a new idea for global high-precision calibration of on-orbit payloads based on local measurements.