PRaDA: Projective Radial Distortion Averaging

We tackle the problem of automatic calibration of radially distorted cameras in challenging conditions. Accurately determining distortion parameters typically requires either 1) solving the full Structure from Motion (SfM) problem involving camera poses, 3D points, and the distortion parameters, which is only possible if many images with sufficient overlap are provided, or 2) relying heavily on learning-based methods that are comparatively less accurate. In this work, we demonstrate that distortion calibration can be decoupled from 3D reconstruction, maintaining the accuracy of SfM-based methods while avoiding many of the associated complexities. This is achieved by working in Projective Space, where the geometry is unique up to a homography, which encapsulates all camera parameters except for distortion. Our proposed method, Projective Radial Distortion Averaging, averages multiple distortion estimates in a fully projective framework without creating 3d points and full bundle adjustment. By relying on pairwise projective relations, our methods support any feature-matching approaches without constructing point tracks across multiple images.