Proceedings of IEEE CCIS2011

CAMERA SELF-CALIBRATION METHOD BASED

ON GA-PSO ALGORITHM
Jing Li, Yimin Yang, Genping Fu
School of Automation, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
Litangjing61@163.com
scene. Guo Q. Y. et al proposed to convert the
equations into the form of cost function according
to the Hartleys deduction and calculate the cost
function[8],the method uses the genetic algorithm
to obtain the minimum value of the cost
function,but this method doesn't deal with local
optimal solution,so the accuracy of the camera
self-calibration is not high. In order to improve the
accuracy of the camera self-calibration, we
propose the GA-PSO algorithm to obtain the
intrinsic parameters by minimizing the cost
function.

Abstract
This paper proposes a new algorithm(GA-PSO) by
combining genetic algorithm and particle swarm
optimization to improve the accuracy of camera
self-calibration based on the Kruppa equation.
Firstly, the simplified Kruppa equations based on
the SVD of the fundamental matrix is converted
into the optimized cost function. Secondly, the
minimum value of the optimized cost function is
calculated by GA-PSO.Finally, the intrinsic
parameters of the camera is obtained. The
experimental results show that it is accurate, and
the accuracy of the proposed method is obviously
improved compared with the single optimization
methods.

2 The cost function based on Kruppa

equations
The pinhole camera model is used in this paper. In
this
model,
the
perspective
projection

Keywords: Camera self-calibration; Kruppa

equation; genetic algorithm; particle swarm
optimization; GA-PSO

of M = (X,Y, Z,1)T onto m = ( x, y ,1)

is given

by m = PM . The matrix P is the projection that

can be factorized into the rigid motion from the
world to the camera reference frame and a 3 3
upper-triangular matrix K called the intrinsic
parameters matrix. The intrinsic parameters matrix

1 Introduction
Camera calibration is an indispensable step to
obtain 3D information from 2D images. Recently,
many researchers have proposed their methods,
and these technologies can be divided into three
categories as follows: standard calibration method,
self-calibration method based on active vision
system, and self-calibration method (no need any
calibration pattern, the camera to be calibrated can
be moved, but it does not assume that the camera
motion is known. The only assumption is that for
every displacement of the camera the
corresponding points between two images can be
established). Because of simple and convenient
manipulation, much attention had been paid to
self-calibration method [1]-[5].
As the first reported approach for camera selfcalibration in [6], the Kruppa equations, which
are derived from the epipolar geometry of the
Absolute Conic, are solved for identifying the
dual of the Image of the Absolute Conic, from
which the camera intrinsic parameters are
retrieved. Yang G. et al proposed an analytic
solution of the self-calibration based on the
Kruppas equations[7],the technique allows camera
self-calibration under the least pairs of views of a

fu

K is given by K = 0

s
fv
0

u0
v0 .
1

Given two images taken at two different positions

with the intrinsic camera parameters fixed, from
the epipolar geometry of absolute conic, the
following relation can be obtained:

[e ]

' T

[ ]

KK T e '

F T KK T F

(1)

The simplification of the Kruppas equations is

given in (2)by Hartley[9] which is based on the
singular
value
decomposition(SVD)of
the
fundamental matrix F . Consider the SVD of a
fundamental matrix F = UDV . Here D is a
diagonal matrix of the singular values( 1 , 2 ,0)
T

The column vectors of U are u1 , u 2 , u 3 and the

column vectors of V are 1 , 2 , 3 . Give the
simplification of Kruppas equations as follows

___________________________________
978-1-61284-204-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE


12 1T C 1 1 2 1T C 2 22 2T C 2
=
= T
u2T Cu2
u1 Cu1
u1T Cu2

optimal solution can be found after a lot of times

of iteration.

(2)

th

Where C = KK T , If C is found out to make those

three equations are equal, then the intrinsic
parameters matrix is obtained, so the question of
camera self-calibration can be solved. Supposing
that the three expressions in Eq.(2) are denoted
with y1 , y2 and y3 respectively:
y1 =

Particle i updates the d -dimension of its velocity

vector and position vector in every iteration as
follows:

vidt+1 = vidt + c1r1(Pidt xidt ) + c2r2(Pgdt xidt ) (5)

xidt +1 = x idt + vidt +1

T
2 1
T
1

2 T
2 2
T
1

The self-calibration problem can be solved by

converting the Kruppas equations to the cost
function which is just a mathematic problem. This
cost function can be used for one pair of images or
multiple pairs of images. For one pair of images,
the cost function f ( f u , f v , u0 , v0 , s ) is denoted as

advance

i.e.if

vid > v max , then we can

set vid = v max [10].

f ( fu , fv,u0,v0,s) =(y1 y2 )2 +(y1 y3)2 +(y2 y3)2 (3)

For the multiple pairs of images, Eq.(4) should be
multiplied its corresponding weight factor i
which represents the reliability of fundamental
matrix Fi which is corresponding to the ith pair of
images. The total cost function is shown as

3.2 GA-PSO algorithm

Genetic algorithm (GA)has the better global search
capability,but it cannot make use of the feedback
information,so it leads to the massive redundancy
iteration. The improved GA generally considers
the problem of premature and convergence,but
ignores
the
condition
of
every
individual.However,PSO can make good use of the
information of every individual, it can improve the
performance of every individual by updating the
the adaptation value and the best location
according to equation(5)and equation(6). In other
words, PSO will perform best in environments
where the average local gradient points towards
the global optimum, but may have difficulties
in finding optima when the average local gradient
points in the wrong direction. In contrast, GAs
exploration direction is rather uncertain, it can
adjust the search space by its mutation
operator.Thus, GA will be able to perform better in
such an environment, since it does not have a
strictly defined exploration area.

F( fu , fv , u0, v0, s) = i fi ( fu , fv ,u0, v0, s)

(6)

The inertia weight controls the influence of

previous velocity a particle, resulting in a memory
effect. Study factors c1 , c 2 play a role in adjusting
a particle's social swarm experience and its own
experience. Here r1 and r2 represent random
variables following the uniform distribution
between 0 and 1.The max velocity must be set at

C 1 ,
C 2 .
C 2 ,
y3 =
y2 = 1
u Cu 2
u Cu1
u Cu 2
2 T
1 1
T
2

(4)

i=1

Where i is the weight factor of the ith image pairs,

and belongs to[0,1], f i ( f u , f v , u 0 , v 0 , s ) is the
ith cost function of corresponding fundamental
matrix. The intrinsic parameters in the cost
function are f u , f v , u 0 , v0 , s . In this paper, we
propose the GA-PSO algorithm to obtain the
intrinsic parameters by minimizing the total cost
function(or to 0).

3 Camera self-calibration method

based on GA-PSO algorithm
3.1 Particle swarm optimization

Therefore, hybrid GA-PSO has been proposed by

combining advantages of PSO and GA.In our
proposed hybrid GA-PSO, selection, crossover and
mutation operation are included, which can
improve the performance of individuals and
increase the diversity of individuals, PSO is
considered as the improvement operator to
improve the performance of individuals again. The
GA-PSO algorithm makes full use of the
individual information in every iteration and has
strong global search capability, the performance of
GA-PSO is obtained greatly improved, and the
following generation which is generated by GAPSO in every iteration is more outstanding than

PSO is a stochastic, population-based evolutionary

optimization algorithm. PSO is initialized with a
group of random particles (solutions) and then
searches for optima by updating generations. In
every iteration, each particle is updated by
following two best value. The first one is its
personal best position which is labeled as pBest
corresponding to the best fitness value obtained so
far in the flying. The other is the global best
particle with the best fitness value of all the
particles corresponding to the current optimum
solution, which is marked with gBest. Each
particle updates the velocity and position
according to pBest and its own gBest. The



the obtained optimal adaptation values, choose the

optimal particle as gbest.
Step3: Selection operator. Random traversal
sampling method is chosen.
Step4: Crossover operator. This operator chooses
the line recombination between pairs of individuals
and returns the new individuals after mating.
Probability of crossover occurring between pairs of
individuals is not used, only for compatibility.
Step5: Mutation operator. the mutation probability
labeled as Pm is set as Pm=0.01. We control the
mutation range in the mutation operation according
to the generation and the fitness value.
Step6: Improvement operator. We calculate the
new speed of each particle according to
equation(5)and the new location of each particle
according to equation(6). For each particle,update
the adaptation value and the best location. Inertia
weight: =0.6, Study factors: c1 = c 2 =1.4962.
Step7: If it reaches the maximum iteration number
200, the best individual of the last generation is
considered as the optimum results of one time,
otherwise, go to step 2. The GA-PSO will run 100
times like this and the average of the results of all
times is calculated.

GA and PSO, so the optimization result of GAPSO will be more accurate than GA and PSO.
Our GA-PSO algorithm is proposed as follows:
Initialization; Calculating fitness value for GA and
PSO; Selection; Crossover; mutation; Applying
PSO to improve the performance of the individuals;
Until the termination criterion is reached. The GAPSO algorithm flow chart is showen in Figure 1.

4 Experiment and analysis of the

results
In order to demonstrate the performance of our
method, we conduct experiments with real images
for camera calibration. Three real images are used
here Figure 2. The Sequence images of template
which can be downloaded from the internet
(http://research.
microsoft.com/enus/um/people/zhang/calib/). Feature points are
automatic picked and matched using the method
proposed by lowe et al [11]. The fundamental
matrices are computed by RANSAC method. We
have also used GA and PSO algorithm to calculate
the Objective function which is defined by Eq.(5).
The performance of three algorithms is showed in
Table 1. The calibration parameters are showed in
Table 2.

Figure 1 The flow chart of GA-PSO

3.3 Camera self-calibration method based on
GA-PSO algorithm
Camera self-calibration method based on GA-PSO
algorithm describe as follows:
Detect the corner points for each image of the
sequence images.
Match the corner points for each pair of images.
Compute all the fundamental matrices, calculate
the SVD of all the fundamental matrices and the
corresponding Kruppa equations.
Write out the fitness function about Eq.(4), then
compute the intrinsic parameters by using GAPSO algorithm as follows:
Step1: Initial population.It generates 2 groups of
individuals, Set the initial position of particles and
initial velocity in specified range.Each ndividual is
a combination of f u , f v , u 0 , v0 , s which are real
number encoding, Population size labeled as
popsize is set at 200 and each individual is
randomly initialized in search space.
Step2: Calculate the fitness value of each
individual.For each individual, calculate the
adaptation value and preserve its best location and
the corresponding optimal adaptation value. From

Figure 2 The sequence images

From Table 1, we can see that the performance of
GA-PSO is best among the three algorithms.The
minimum value and the average value both get
close to 0,success rate is 100%.



From Table 2, we can see that this papers result is

similar to Zhang. This result is obviously improved
compared with the single optimization methods.
Due to the GA-PSO algorithm which is combined
by GA and PSO, its running time is more than GA
and PSO, but it is worth to obtain the accurate
result at the expense of a few seconds time. In
order to get more stable results, we can add the
population size properly, but it also increases the
running time.

124
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Table 1 the performance of three algorithms

Method
GA
PSO
GA-PSO

Minimum value

Average value

1.67

4 .83 10

1 .05 10

Success rate

4.63

98%

5.68

97%

4.02 105

100%

Table 2 Calibration results

Method

fu

fv

u0

v0

Zhang

832.53

832.53

303.96

206.58

0.20

GA

803.07

803.06

290.10

201.34

0.36

PSO

804.46

804.15

295.93

198.59

0.72

GA-PSO

831.32

831.39

304.04

206.71

0.21

5 Conclusions
In order to improve the accuracy of camera selfcalibration, the GA-PSO algorithm which
combines GA with PSO is presented.Firstly,
simplified Kruppa equations are obtained by
singular value decomposition of the fundamental
matrix. Secondly, the value of the camera intrinsic
parameters are obtained by optimizing the cost
function based on simplified Kruppa equations
with GA-PSO algorithm. The experimental results
show that the accuracy of the proposed method is
obviously improved compared with single
optimization methods. Because the calibration
method is simple and high-precision, it has great
practical value. The author will apply this method
to real-time sequence images in the later work.

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