Camera Calibration Using Gray Code

In order to determine camera parameters, a calibration procedure involving the camera recordings of a checkerboard is usually performed. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach that uses Gray-code patterns displayed on an LCD screen. Gray-code patterns allow us to decode 3D location information of points of the LCD screen at every pixel in the camera image. This is in contrast to checkerboard patterns where the number of corresponding locations is limited to the number of checkerboard corners. We show that, for the case of a UEye CMOS camera, the precision of focal-length estimation is 1.5 times more precise than when using a standard calibration with a checkerboard pattern.