Bringing into Register Incomplete Range Images of Cultural Artifacts

Finding solutions for preserving cultural heritage and historic and architectural sites as 3D models is an important problem in our days. Building 3D models of real objects is also an important research issue in virtual reality. Since a 3D range scanner, used for obtaining 3D data, is a line-of-sight instrument, in most cases it is necessary to scan the object from multiple viewpoints to completely reconstruct it. Acquired range images need to be brought into register to build one coherent model. This article presents two registration methods for incomplete range images. One is based on the assumption that the range images being registered have a significant overlap with some feature points. The second one needs additionally 2D photographs of the scene to perform the right registration, but the overlapping area of range images is not necessary here. The presented methods are semi-automatic and based on the analysis of redundant and uncertain data.