Image distortion from zoom lenses: modeling and digital correction

Television camera lenses and in particular variable focal length lenses (zoom lenses) are not perfect optical instruments. They provide images with two kinds of optical defects, geometric and chromatic aberration. For tube cameras, these distortion defects and the lateral chromatic aberration within the tube scan are corrected. In the case of CCD based systems this correction principle is no longer applicable. Even if the defects are negligible in current TV standards, they become important in HDTV and very high resolution image analysis. The authors propose a method of digital correction of distortion and lateral chromatic aberration effects before image processing and viewing.