Archeological excavation monitoring using dense stereo matching techniques
Author
Summary, in English
Several new tools to obtain three-dimensional information from unorganized image sets are now available for the public use.
The main advantage of this software, which is based on dense stereo matching, is the possibility to generate 3D content without the need of high-cost hardware (e.g. 3D scanning devices). Nevertheless,
their use in real-world application domains (like cultural heritage) is still not very diffused, due to the non-straightforward usability of the raw data produced. In this paper, we investigate the use of automatic dense stereo reconstruction tools for the monitoring of an excavation site. A methodology for the effective acquisition and processing of data is presented. In addition, the results of the data assessment demonstrate the repeatability of the data acquisition process, which is a key factor when qualitative analysis is performed. The use of three-dimensional data is integrated in an open source mesh processing tool, thus showing that a spatio-temporal analysis can be performed in a very intuitive way using off-the-shelf or free/open digital tools. Moreover, the use of peculiar rendering and the creation of snapshots from arbitrary points of view increase the amount of documentation data, and suggest a perfect integration of data produced with dense stereo matching in the future standard documentation for excavation monitoring.
The main advantage of this software, which is based on dense stereo matching, is the possibility to generate 3D content without the need of high-cost hardware (e.g. 3D scanning devices). Nevertheless,
their use in real-world application domains (like cultural heritage) is still not very diffused, due to the non-straightforward usability of the raw data produced. In this paper, we investigate the use of automatic dense stereo reconstruction tools for the monitoring of an excavation site. A methodology for the effective acquisition and processing of data is presented. In addition, the results of the data assessment demonstrate the repeatability of the data acquisition process, which is a key factor when qualitative analysis is performed. The use of three-dimensional data is integrated in an open source mesh processing tool, thus showing that a spatio-temporal analysis can be performed in a very intuitive way using off-the-shelf or free/open digital tools. Moreover, the use of peculiar rendering and the creation of snapshots from arbitrary points of view increase the amount of documentation data, and suggest a perfect integration of data produced with dense stereo matching in the future standard documentation for excavation monitoring.
Department/s
- Digital Archaeology Laboratory DARK Lab
- Archaeology
- Lund University Humanities Lab
Publishing year
2013
Language
English
Pages
201-210
Publication/Series
Journal of Cultural Heritage
Volume
14
Issue
3
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Archaeology
Keywords
- Archeology
- Archeology excavation
- Documenting
- Monitoring
- Dense stereo reconstruction
- Digital 3D models
- Visualization
- Assessment
Status
Published
Project
- The Uppåkra project
Research group
- Digital Archaeology Laboratory DARK Lab
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1778-3674