Development of a Camera Self-calibration Method for 10-parameter Mapping Function

Tomographic particle image velocimetry (PIV) is a widely used method that measures a three-dimensional (3D) flow field by reconstructing camera images into voxel images. In 3D measurements, the setting and calibration of the camera's mapping function significantly impact the obtained results. In this study, a camera self-calibration technique is applied to tomographic PIV to reduce the occurrence of errors arising from such functions. The measured 3D particles are superimposed on the image to create a disparity map. Camera self-calibration is performed by reflecting the error of the disparity map to the center value of the particles. Vortex ring synthetic images are generated and the developed algorithm is applied. The optimal result is obtained by applying self-calibration once when the center error is less than 1 pixel and by applying self-calibration 2–3 times when it was more than 1 pixel; the maximum recovery ratio is 96%. Further self-correlation did not improve the results. The algorithm is evaluated by performing an actual rotational flow experiment, and the optimal result was obtained when self-calibration was applied once, as shown in the virtual image result. Therefore, the developed algorithm is expected to be utilized for the performance improvement of 3D flow measurements.