Calibration-free hand-eye calibration: A structure-from-motion approach

The paper presents an extended hand-eye calibration approach that, in contrast to the standard method, does not require a calibration pattern for determining camera position and orientation. Instead, a structure-from-motion algorithm is applied for obtaining the eye-data that is necessary for computing the unknown hand-eye transformation. Different ways of extending the standard algorithm are presented, which mainly involves the estimation of a scale factor in addition to rotation and translation. The proposed methods are experimentally compared using data obtained from an optical tracking system that determines the pose of an endoscopic camera. The approach is of special interest in our clinical setup, as the usage of an unsterile calibration pattern is difficult in a sterile environment.