In central catadioptric systems, lines in a scene are projected to conic
curves in the image. This work studies the geometry of the central catadioptric
projection of lines and its use in calibration. It is shown that the conic curves where
the lines are mapped possess several projective invariant properties. From these
properties, it follows that any central catadioptric system can be fully calibrated from
an image of three or more lines. The image of the absolute conic, the relative pose
between the camera and the mirror, and the shape of the reflective surface can be
recovered using a geometric construction based on the conic loci where the lines
are projected. This result is valid for any central catadioptric system and generalizes
previous results for paracatadioptric sensors. Moreover, it is proven that systems
with a hyperbolic/elliptical mirror can be calibrated from the image of two lines. If
both the shape and the pose of the mirror are known, then two line images are
enough to determine the image of the absolute conic encoding the camera’s
intrinsic parameters. The sensitivity to errors is evaluated and the approach is used
to calibrate a real camer
