Robust radiometric calibration and vignetting correction

In many computer vision systems, it is assumedthat the image brightness of a point directly reflects the scene radiance of the point. However, the assumption does not hold inmost cases due to nonlinear camera response function, exposure changes, and vignetting. The effects of these factors are mostvisible in image mosaics and textures of 3D models where colors look in consistent and notable boundaries exist. In thispaper, we propose a full radiometric calibration algorithm that includes robust estimation of the radiometric response function, exposures, and vignetting. By decoupling the effect of vignetting from the response function estimation, we approach each processin a manner that is robust to noise and outliers. We verifyour algorithm with both synthetic and real data which showssignificant improvement compared to existing methods. We applyour estimation results to radiometrically align images for seamlessmosaics and 3D model textures. We also use our methodto create high dynamic range (HDR) mosaics which are more representative of the scene than normal mosaics.