Stereoscopic video imaging using a low-cost PC-based system
Lefteris Tournas, Andreas Georgopoulos · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2000
Stereoscopic video capture, storage and display are critical tasks for several video metric applications and usually require specialized equipment. A low cost configuration for stereoscopic video imaging has been developed in the Laboratory of Photogrammetry of the National Technical University of Athens. The system consists of two conventional video cameras connected on a PC by using a multiple frame grabber board. Specialized software developed under Windows 98 guarantees accurate camera synchronization and uninterrupted image capture of 25-30 frames per second. Stereoscopic video playback is also accomplished without using expensive hardware equipment. The required software was developed on a low price video card that supports LCD glasses for 3D-computer gaming. The video sequence is firstly rectified to the normal case by creating epipolar images to facilitate stereo viewing. Accurate coordinate measurements are also performed on computer screen by using a conventional mouse, if exterior orientation dat is also available.