A Framework for Working with Digitized Cultural Heritage Artifacts

In this paper, we present our work in designing, implementing, and evaluating a set of 3D interactive spatial measurement tools in the context of Cultural Heritage Toolbox (CH Toolbox), a framework for computer-aided cultural heritage research. Our application utilizes a bi-manual, spaceball and mouse driven user interface to help the user manage visualized 3D models digitized from real artifacts. We have developed a virtual radius estimator, useful for analyzing incomplete pieces of radial artifacts, and a virtual tape measure, useful in measurement of geodesic distances between two points on the surface of an artifact. We tested the tools on the special case of pottery analysis.