Rectangling Stereographic Projection for Wide-Angle Image Visualization

This paper proposes a new projection model for mapping a hemisphere to a plane. Such a model can be useful for viewing wide-angle images. Our model consists of two steps. In the first step, the hemisphere is projected onto a swung surface constructed by a circular profile and a rounded rectangular trajectory. The second step maps the projected image on the swung surface onto the image plane through the perspective projection. We also propose a method for automatically determining proper parameters for the projection model based on image content. The proposed model has several advantages. It is simple, efficient and easy to control. Most importantly, it makes a better compromise between distortion minimization and line preserving than popular projection models, such as stereographic and Pannini projections. Experiments and analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.