An imaging Stokes polarimeter based on rotating quarter-wave plate method is comprised of a rotating quarter-wave plate, a fixed polarizer, imaging optics and a photodetector. The fast-axis angle error and the retardation error of the quarter-wave plate are the main error sources of the imaging Stokes polarimeter based on rotating quarter-wave plate method. The measurement accuracy can be efficiently improved with the calibration and error compensation. For this purpose, the relations between the Stokes parameters of the incident polarized light and the two parameter errors of the quarter-wave plate are derived by investigating the rotating quarter-wave plate method and Fourier analysis method and therefore, a new calibration method is proposed. Horizontally polarized light is used as a standard reference light and measured to calculate the two parameter errors of the quarter-wave plate and then complete the error compensation by substituting them into the corresponding formula. The experimental results show that the average measurement accuracy is improved from 5.12% to 1.78%, which indicates that the proposed calibration and error compensation method is valid and effective.