Panasonic Innovative New Method for Distortion Correction with One Photo

Nikkei reports about Panasonic’s new revolutionary technology that can quickly correct distortion and tilt of a photo with high precision using only the information from a single photo. Digicameinfo summarize the article which is only available for subscribed members:

• “I rewrote the world view of camera calibration.” A confident young 36-year-old engineer is at Panasonic Holdings Platform Headquarters. In just two years, Nobuhiko Wakai devised a method to accurately estimate the distortion of captured images.
• Using the new method, images shot at an angle or distorted images shot with a wide-angle or fisheye lens can be instantly corrected to horizontal images without distortion. Moreover, only one image is required for variable extraction for the conversion. Previously, multiple photos were required. “It will be possible to (automatically) correct images using only a smartphone or camera,” says Mr. Wakai.
• One of the technical trends that has been announced at international academic conferences over the past few years is “deep layer single image camera calibration technology,” which calibrate the camera from a single image. However, because there is little information to use for estimation, “It is very difficult and the accuracy was insufficient until now,” he said.
• As a result, trial and error became unnecessary, and the learning time was shortened to “27 years for the conventional method and 1 day for the proposed method.”
• Panasonic HD will verify this method using actual data and aim for practical application.

The new technology developed by Panasonic is capable of instantaneously correcting distortions and tilts with a high degree of accuracy using information from only one image. In addition, it will be possible to apply automatic distortion correction even to images without data such as lens aberration, so it seems to be useful for correcting images shot with old lenses.