LensdistortionExamples

Like a traditional fisheye lens, Tailored Distortiontion™ is ideal for automotive, security, and medical applications where an ultra-wide field of view is required. Please view our webinar to learn more about Sunex Tailored Distortiontion™.

There is a wide variety of lens mapping functions or distortion types available for machine/computer vision lenses. Discussing your application needs with our engineers helps to understand the trade-offs before finalizing on the lens distortion specification.

Pincushiondistortion

The concept of distortion describes how a lens maps a shape on the object plane to the image plane while assuming other aberrations are negligible. Once the lens mapping function is known the distortion characteristics are fully determined. In a rotationally symmetric lens with infinity object distance, the lens mapping function relates the image height (h) on the image plane to the field angle (theta) in the object space. Some of the commonly seen mapping functions are shown in Figure below:

Lens distortion is a commonly used term in the general specification of lenses. The classic, textbook definition of distortion includes barrel and pincushion type distortions. These concepts are useful for photographic optics where the field of view of the lenses is not extreme. Lenses designed for machine or computer vision applications can have an extreme field of view. Field of view greater than 100 degrees are common specifications for machine vision lenses. We need to develop more suitable concepts to describe the distortion characteristics of these lenses.