3d Reconstruction for a Cultural Heritage Virtual Tour System

The aim of this study is to build a Web-based virtual tour system, focused at the presentation of archaeological sites. The proposed approach is comprised of powerful techniques such as multiview 3D reconstruction, omnidirectional viewing based on panoramic images, and their integration with GIS technologies. In the proposed method, the scene is captured from multiple viewpoints utilizing off-the-shelf equipment and its 3D structure is extracted from the acquired images based on stereoscopic techniques. Color information is added to the generated 3D model of the scene and the result is converted to a common 3D scene modeling format. The 3D models and interactive virtual tour tools such as 360° viewing are integrated with GIS technologies in which the excavation site plans can be added as detailed raster overlays. * Corresponding author.