Projector calibration method based on optical coaxial camera

This paper presents a novel method to accurately calibrate a DLP projector by using an optical coaxial camera to capture the needed images. A plate beam splitter is used to make imaging axis of the CCD camera and projecting axis of the DLP projector coaxial, so the DLP projector can be treated as a true inverse camera. A plate having discrete markers on the surface will be designed and manufactured to calibrate the DLP projector. By projecting vertical and horizontal sinusoidal fringe patterns on the plate surface from the projector, the absolute phase of each marker's center can be obtained. The corresponding projector pixel coordinate of each marker is determined from the obtained absolute phase. The internal and external parameters of the DLP projector are calibrated by the corresponding point pair between the projector coordinate and the world coordinate of discrete markers. Experimental results show that the proposed method accurately obtains the parameters of the DLP projector. One advantage of the method is the calibrated internal and external parameters have high accuracy because of uncalibrating the camera. The other is the optical coaxes geometry gives a true inverse camera, so the calibrated parameters are more accurate than that of crossed-optical-axes, especially the principal points and the radial distortion coefficients of the projector lens.