Unsupervised Lateral Chromatic Aberration (LCA) detection and correction for improved image fidelity

Lateral Chromatic Aberration is a defect of optical lenses in connection with focusing different wavelengths of light (red, blue, green) at different locations in the focal plane, which leads to resolution loss and color artifacts (fringes). To preserve image fidelity, we have developed a robust multi-phase unsupervised method (not using a reference image for calibration and without prior knowledge of the lens), that is based on edge matching in different color planes. We are able to estimate parameters of a lateral chromatic aberration correction model, which is then used to avoid these artefacts by correct resampling of red and blue color planes with sub-pixel accuracy. This method is suitable for real-time implementation in consumer-grade image/video systems and shows very promising results.