Calculate a 2D homogeneous perspective transformation matrix from 4 points in MATLAB
Should have been an easy question. So how do I get M*A=B*W into a solvable form? It's just matrix multiplications, so we can write this as a system of linear equations. You know like: M11*A11 + M12*A21 + M13*A31 = B11*W11 + B12*W21 + B13*W31 + B14*W41. And every system of linear equations can be written in the form Ax=b, or to avoid confusion with already used variables in my question: N*x=y. That's all.
An example according to my question: I generate some input data with a known M and W:
M = [
1 2 3;
4 5 6;
7 8 1
];
A = [
0 0 1 1;
0 1 0 1;
1 1 1 1
];
W = [
4 0 0 0;
0 3 0 0;
0 0 2 0;
0 0 0 1
];
B = M*A*(W^-1);
Then I forget about M and W. Meaning I now have 13 variables I'm looking to solve. I rewrite M*A=B*W into a system of linear equations, and from there into the form N*x=y. In N every column has the factors for one variable:
N = [
A(1,1) A(2,1) A(3,1) 0 0 0 0 0 0 -B(1,1) 0 0 0;
0 0 0 A(1,1) A(2,1) A(3,1) 0 0 0 -B(2,1) 0 0 0;
0 0 0 0 0 0 A(1,1) A(2,1) A(3,1) -B(3,1) 0 0 0;
A(1,2) A(2,2) A(3,2) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -B(1,2) 0 0;
0 0 0 A(1,2) A(2,2) A(3,2) 0 0 0 0 -B(2,2) 0 0;
0 0 0 0 0 0 A(1,2) A(2,2) A(3,2) 0 -B(3,2) 0 0;
A(1,3) A(2,3) A(3,3) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -B(1,3) 0;
0 0 0 A(1,3) A(2,3) A(3,3) 0 0 0 0 0 -B(2,3) 0;
0 0 0 0 0 0 A(1,3) A(2,3) A(3,3) 0 0 -B(3,3) 0;
A(1,4) A(2,4) A(3,4) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -B(1,4);
0 0 0 A(1,4) A(2,4) A(3,4) 0 0 0 0 0 0 -B(2,4);
0 0 0 0 0 0 A(1,4) A(2,4) A(3,4) 0 0 0 -B(3,4);
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
];
And y is:
y = [ 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1 ];
Notice the equation described by the last row in N whose solution is 1 according to y. That's what I mentioned in my question, you have to fix one of the entries of M to get a single solution. (We can do this because every multiple of M is the same transformation.) And with this equation I'm saying M33 should be 1.
We solve this for x:
x = N\y
and get:
x = [ 1.00000; 2.00000; 3.00000; 4.00000; 5.00000; 6.00000; 7.00000; 8.00000; 1.00000; 4.00000; 3.00000; 2.00000; 1.00000 ]
which are the solutions for [ M11, M12, M13, M21, M22, M23, M31, M32, M33, w1, w2, w3, w4 ]
When doing this in JavaScript I could use the Numeric JavaScript library which has the needed function solve to solve Ax=b.
OpenCV has a neat function that does this called getPerspectiveTransform. The source code for this function is available on github with this description:
/* Calculates coefficients of perspective transformation
* which maps (xi,yi) to (ui,vi), (i=1,2,3,4):
*
* c00*xi + c01*yi + c02
* ui = ---------------------
* c20*xi + c21*yi + c22
*
* c10*xi + c11*yi + c12
* vi = ---------------------
* c20*xi + c21*yi + c22
*
* Coefficients are calculated by solving linear system:
* / x0 y0 1 0 0 0 -x0*u0 -y0*u0 \ /c00\ /u0\
* | x1 y1 1 0 0 0 -x1*u1 -y1*u1 | |c01| |u1|
* | x2 y2 1 0 0 0 -x2*u2 -y2*u2 | |c02| |u2|
* | x3 y3 1 0 0 0 -x3*u3 -y3*u3 |.|c10|=|u3|,
* | 0 0 0 x0 y0 1 -x0*v0 -y0*v0 | |c11| |v0|
* | 0 0 0 x1 y1 1 -x1*v1 -y1*v1 | |c12| |v1|
* | 0 0 0 x2 y2 1 -x2*v2 -y2*v2 | |c20| |v2|
* \ 0 0 0 x3 y3 1 -x3*v3 -y3*v3 / \c21/ \v3/
*
* where:
* cij - matrix coefficients, c22 = 1
*/
This system of equations is smaller as it avoids solving for W and M33 (called c22 by OpenCV). So how does it work? The linear system can be recreated by the following steps:
Start with the formulas for projection transformation:
c00*xi + c01*yi + c02
ui = ---------------------
c20*xi + c21*yi + c22
c10*xi + c11*yi + c12
vi = ---------------------
c20*xi + c21*yi + c22
Multiply both sides with the denominator:
(c20*xi + c21*yi + c22) * ui = c00*xi + c01*yi + c02
(c20*xi + c21*yi + c22) * vi = c10*xi + c11*yi + c12
Distribute ui and vi:
c20*xi*ui + c21*yi*ui + c22*ui = c00*xi + c01*yi + c02
c20*xi*vi + c21*yi*vi + c22*vi = c10*xi + c11*yi + c12
Assume c22 = 1:
c20*xi*ui + c21*yi*ui + ui = c00*xi + c01*yi + c02
c20*xi*vi + c21*yi*vi + vi = c10*xi + c11*yi + c12
Collect all cij on the left hand side:
c00*xi + c01*yi + c02 - c20*xi*ui - c21*yi*ui = ui
c10*xi + c11*yi + c12 - c20*xi*vi - c21*yi*vi = vi
And finally convert to matrix form for four pairs of points:
/ x0 y0 1 0 0 0 -x0*u0 -y0*u0 \ /c00\ /u0\
| x1 y1 1 0 0 0 -x1*u1 -y1*u1 | |c01| |u1|
| x2 y2 1 0 0 0 -x2*u2 -y2*u2 | |c02| |u2|
| x3 y3 1 0 0 0 -x3*u3 -y3*u3 |.|c10|=|u3|
| 0 0 0 x0 y0 1 -x0*v0 -y0*v0 | |c11| |v0|
| 0 0 0 x1 y1 1 -x1*v1 -y1*v1 | |c12| |v1|
| 0 0 0 x2 y2 1 -x2*v2 -y2*v2 | |c20| |v2|
\ 0 0 0 x3 y3 1 -x3*v3 -y3*v3 / \c21/ \v3/
This is now in the form of Ax=b and the solution can be obtained with x = A\b. Remember that c22 = 1.