Book excerpt: This work focuses on central catadioptric systems, from the early step of calibration to high-level tasks such as 3D information retrieval. The book opens with a thorough introduction to the sphere camera model, along with an analysis of the relation between this model and actual central catadioptric systems. Then, a new approach to calibrate any single-viewpoint catadioptric camera is described. This is followed by an analysis of existing methods for calibrating central omnivision systems, and a detailed examination of hybrid two-view relations that combine images acquired with uncalibrated central catadioptric systems and conventional cameras. In the remaining chapters, the book discusses a new method to compute the scale space of any omnidirectional image acquired with a central catadioptric system, and a technique for computing the orientation of a hand-held omnidirectional catadioptric camera.