Accurate projector calibration method by using an optical coaxial camera

Digital light processing (DLP) projectors have been widely utilized to project digital structured-light patterns in 3D imaging systems. In order to obtain accurate 3D shape data, it is important to calibrate DLP projectors to obtain the internal parameters. The existing projector calibration methods have complicated procedures or low accuracy of the obtained parameters. This paper presents a novel method to accurately calibrate a DLP projector by using an optical coaxial camera. The optical coaxial geometry is realized by a plate beam splitter, so the DLP projector can be treated as a true inverse camera. A plate having discrete markers on the surface is used to calibrate the projector. The corresponding projector pixel coordinate of each marker on the plate is determined by projecting vertical and horizontal sinusoidal fringe patterns on the plate surface and calculating the absolute phase. The internal parameters of the DLP projector are obtained by the corresponding point pair between the projector pixel coordinate and the world coordinate of discrete markers. Experimental results show that the proposed method can accurately calibrate the internal parameters of a DLP projector.