Section: Application Domains

Quantitative image analysis in science and humanities

We plan to apply our 3D object and scene modeling and analysis technology to image-based modeling of human skeletons and artifacts in anthropology, and large-scale site indexing, modeling, and retrieval in archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. Most existing work in this domain concentrates on image-based rendering—that is, the synthesis of good-looking pictures of artifacts and digs. We plan to focus instead on quantitative applications. A first effort in this area has been a collaboration with the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, aimed at the quantitative analysis of environmental effects on the hieroglyphic stairway at the Copan Maya site in Honduras. We are now pursuing a larger-scale project involving the archaeology laboratory at ENS and focusing on image-based artifact modeling and decorative pattern retrieval in Pompeii. This new effort is part of the MSR-INRIA project mentioned earlier and that will be discussed further later in this report.