A camera flash projector-based reconstruction system for digital preservation of artifacts

Computer vision techniques have been applied for rapid and accurate structure recovery in many fields. Most methods perform poorly in areas containing little or no texture and in the presence of repetitive patterns. We present a portable, cost-effective pattern projector system powered by the flash of a camera, to aid the reconstruction of such areas. No calibration is required between the camera-projector, projector-scene, or pattern. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system on various representative surfaces like stone, metal, clay, porcelain, and natural fibers, with different inherent colors/textures. A pipeline is presented to automatically generate textured, true-scale metric models, that can be used for quantitative studies or visualization. The practicability of our system is explored in the specific area of digital archiving of historically significant objects. We show results from field trips to 12th century temples at Belur and Halebidu in South India and objects from the Wintherthur museum, Delaware, USA.