Javascript – Convert pixel location to latitude/longitude & vise versa

Are there any more specific details on the kind of distortion? If, for example, your latitudes and longitudes are "distorted" onto your 2D map using a Mercator projection, the conversion math is readily available.

If the map is distorted truly arbitrarily, there are lots of things you could try, but the simplest would probably be to compute a weighted average from your existing point mappings. Your weights could be the squared inverse of the x/y distance from your new point to each of your existing points.

Some pseudocode:

estimate-latitude-longitude (x, y)

    numerator-latitude := 0
    numerator-longitude := 0
    denominator := 0

    for each point,
        deltaX := x - point.x
        deltaY := y - point.y
        distSq := deltaX * deltaX + deltaY * deltaY
        weight := 1 / distSq

        numerator-latitude += weight * point.latitude
        numerator-longitude += weight * point.longitude
        denominator += weight

    return (numerator-latitude / denominator, numerator-longitude / denominator)

This code will give a relatively simple approximation. If you can be more precise about the way the projection distorts the geographical coordinates, you can probably do much better.

This link might be helpful to you, as it details the use of the Haversine formula to calculate the distance.

Excerpt:

This script [in Javascript] calculates great-circle distances between the two points – that is, the shortest distance over the earth’s surface – using the ‘Haversine’ formula.

function getDistanceFromLatLonInKm(lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2) {
  var R = 6371; // Radius of the earth in km
  var dLat = deg2rad(lat2-lat1);  // deg2rad below
  var dLon = deg2rad(lon2-lon1); 
  var a = 
    Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
    Math.cos(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(lat2)) * 
    Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2)
    ; 
  var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a)); 
  var d = R * c; // Distance in km
  return d;
}

function deg2rad(deg) {
  return deg * (Math.PI/180)
}