Geometric calibration of lens and filter distortions for multispectral filter-wheel cameras

High-fidelity color image acquisition with a multispectral camera utilizes optical filters to separate the visible electromagnetic spectrum into several passbands. This is often realized with a computer-controlled filter wheel, where each position is equipped with an optical bandpass filter. For each filter wheel position, a grayscale image is acquired and the passbands are finally combined to a multispectral image. However, the different optical properties and non-coplanar alignment of the filters cause image aberrations since the optical path is slightly different for each filter wheel position. As in a normal camera system, the lens causes additional wavelength-dependent image distortions called chromatic aberrations. When transforming the multispectral image with these aberrations into an RGB image, color fringes appear, and the image exhibits a pincushion or barrel distortion. In this paper, we address both the distortions caused by the lens and by the filters. Based on a physical model of the bandpass filters, we show that the aberrations caused by the filters can be modeled by displaced image planes. The lens distortions are modeled by an extended pinhole camera model, which results in a remaining mean calibration error of only 0.07 pixels. Using an absolute calibration target, we then geometrically calibrate each passband and compensate for both lens and filter distortions simultaneously. We show that both types of aberrations can be compensated and present detailed results on the remaining calibration errors.