From a conservationist's point of view

Although more and more computer-aided technologies are utilised or demonstrated on well-known monuments or archaeological sites, there is at least for the professionals working in the field still some lack of clarity about their application. The main idea of our research project is to construct a prototype of a tool that tries to bring new technologies closer to the daily practice. It incorporates recent developments in computer vision and reverse engineering, while at the same time tries to answer the practical concerns from civil servants, architects, topographers, art-historians... who are responsible for the conservation of monuments or archaeological sites. The proposed system covers automatic correspondence analysis and point cloud manipulation to build up a textured 3D model. This model then acts as the central core of a multimedia data structure for the annotation, geometric and thematic interrogation and visualisation of the building or site being studied.