Joint Estimation of Epipolar Geometry and Rectification Parameters using Point Correspondences for Stereoscopic TV Sequences

An optimal stereo sequence needs to be rectified in order to avoid vertical disparities and similar image distortions. However, due to imperfect stereo rigs, vertical disparities occur mainly due to a mechanical misalignment of the cameras. Several rectification methods are known, most of them are based on a strong calibration. However, calibration data is often not provided, such that the rectification needs to be done based on point correspondences. In this paper, we propose a rectification technique which estimates the fundamental matrix jointly with the appropriate rectification parameters. The algorithm is designed for narrow baseline stereo rigs. The optical axes are almost parallel (beside a possible convergence angle). The rectification parameters allow a pose estimation of one camera relative to the other one so that the mechanical alignment of the stereo rig can be improved.