Geometry of Distorted Visual Space and Cremona Transformation

  • Authors:
  • Loong-Fah Cheong;Kok-Onn Ng

  • Affiliations:
  • Electrical Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260;Mathematics Department, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Computer Vision
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

An important issue concerning the design of any vision system is thechoice of a proper space representation. In order to search for clues to a suitable representation, we look at the distortion of space arising fromerrors in motion or stereo estimates. Understanding thisspace distortion has important epistemologicalimplications for the problem of space representation because it tellsus what can be and what cannot be computed. This paper istherefore an enquiry into the nature of space representation throughthe study of the space distortion, though it is not apsychophysical or physiological study but rather a computationalone. We show that the distortion transformation is a quadratic Cremonatransformation, which is bijective almost everywhere except on theset of fundamental elements. We identify the fundamental elements ofboth the direct and the inverse transformations, and study thebehaviour of the space distortion by analyzing the transformation of space elements (lines, planes) that pass throughthese fundamental elements.