Comparison and Evaluation of Laser Scanning and Photogrammetry and Their Combined Use for Digital Recording of Cultural Heritage

Three-dimensional (3D) scanning and modeling of sites and artifacts of cultural heritage have increased remarkably in recent years. A wide variety of objects, e.g., small pieces of pottery, statues, buildings, and large areas of archaeological sites, have been scanned and modeled for such purposes as preservation, reconstruction, study, and museum exhibitions. Due to the range in size of the objects to be scanned and differences in the objectives for scanning and modeling, many approaches and options have been tested and used. As a result, it is clear that there is no single method that is applicable to recording every subject of cultural heritage and hence there is a strong demand for a hybrid method that exploits several technologies. Laser scanning can produce the dense 3D point-cloud data that is required to create high-resolution geometric models, although the quality of color information is sometimes lower than required. Another technology, digital photogrammetry, can produce high-resolution textures, if the original images have sufficient pixels, and 3D models. There is no doubt that these two technologies can supplement each other in creating high-quality 3D recordings and presentations. In this paper, we report a comparison and evaluation of laser scanning and photogrammetry and their combined use to digitally record cultural heritage objects from the point of view of producing accurate and expressive models and efficient data processing. The data used here was obtained from our experimental 3D measurement of Byzantine ruins on Gemiler Island, off the southwest coast of Turkey, in 2002. * Corresponding author.