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Paintings, frescoes, antique photographic prints, incunabula, old books, handwritten documents,
sculptures, ceramic fragments, and other ancient manufacts constitute the elements of an extremely
valuable and immense historical patrimony. The digitalization of these treasures opens up the
possibility of using image processing and analysis and computer graphics techniques to preserve this
heritage for future generations and to augment it with accesory information or with new possibilities
for its enjoyment and use. Digital imaging solutions can be used to generate virtually restored
versions of the original artworks to be presented in online museums and/or for further development
of historical studies; application of various feature extraction and image data analysis techniques are
useful in addressing problems of authorship and artwork style categorization in the history of the arts;
three-dimensional reconstruction of ancient artworks or entire archeological sites allows the creation
of multidimensional models that incorporate information coming from excavations, archaeological
know-how, and heterogeneous historical sources.
Pioneer works in this area have sprung up from the close, but too often occasional, cooperation
of scientists with historians and archaeologists. Case studies in these kinds of interdisciplinary works
are now abundant, yet the different worlds of information technology and art and history have not
built a robust common language. This book wishes to respond to the growing demand of this area to
bridge the existing gap between these different scientific communities. The urgency of providing a
common ground, where technology may meet humanities, comes from the forthcoming generation of
imaging devices that will provide better performances with lower costs, allowing the wide application
of techniques nowadays considered experimental. This book comes as one of a few dedicated
monographs dealing with digital imaging methods for cultural heritage preservation. It is a collection
of contributions which cover the most prominent topics and applications of digital image processing,
analysis, and computer graphics in the field of cultural heritage preservation. In this contributed
volume, well-known experts present a collection of recent results covering a wide range of topics
and related applications such as digitization, indexation of visual databases, automatic reassembly
of ceramic fragments, restoration and analysis of the digital images of original artworks, digital
archaeology using laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3D from 2D photo approaches, computer
graphics by means of simulation for ancient mosaics reproduction, and copyright protection of
artwork images using digital watermarking. |
