One of the main drivers for intelligent transportation systems is safety.Adaptive cruise control,as a common solution for traffic safety,has extended from radars to cameras.Due to high mobility of vehicles and unevenness of roads,the picture quality of cameras has been great challenges for camera-based adaptive cruise control.In this paper,an image distortion correction algorithm is addressed.Our method is based on optical flow technology which is normally applied in motion estimation and video compression research.We are the first to attempt to adapt it in image distortion correction.Two optical flow approaches,the Lucas-Kanade method and the Horn-Schunck method,are selected and compared.The procedure of image distortion correction using the optical flow method has been tested by both synthetic test images and camera images.The experimental results show that the Lucas-Kanade method is more suitable in the correction of image distortion. One of the main drivers for intelligent transportation systems is safety. Adaptive cruise control, as a common solution for traffic safety, has extended from radars to cameras. Due to high mobility of vehicles and unevenness of roads, the picture quality of cameras has been great challenges for camera-based adaptive cruise control. This paper, an image distortion correction algorithm is addressed. Our method is based on optical flow technology which is normally applied in motion estimation and video compression research.We are the first to attempt to adapt it in image distortion correction. Two optical flow approaches, the Lucas-Kanade method and the Horn-Schunck method, are selected and compared. the procedure of image distortion correction using the optical flow method has been tested by both synthetic test images and camera images. The experimental results show that the Lucas-Kanade method is more suitable in the correction of image distortion.