Fitting of a closed planar curve representing a profile of an archaeological fragment

Motivated by the requirements of the present archaeology, we are developing an automated system for archaeological classification of ceramics. The basis for classification and reconstruction of ceramics is the profile, which is the cross-section of the fragment in the direction of the rotational axis of symmetry, and can be represented by a closed curve in the plane. This paper compares and combines several methods for interpolation and approximation of a closed curve by B--splines in the plane. The closed curve, representing the profile, is divided into several parts for which the most accurate method is selected. All the interpolation and approximation methods are compared on the provided data with respect to the achieved precision and 'complexity' of the curve description. The graphical output of the program suggests to the archaeologists, which combination of these methods gives the best representation of the reconstructed profile from the data under the smallest possible error and the simplest possible spline representation.

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