Giving Historical Photographs a New Perspective: Introducing Camera Orientation Parameters as New Metadata in a Large-Scale 4D Application

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Ferdinand Maiwald - , Chair of Photogrammetry, Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Author)
  • Jonas Bruschke - , University of Würzburg (Author)
  • Danilo Schneider - , Dresden University of Applied Sciences (HTW) (Author)
  • Markus Wacker - , Dresden University of Applied Sciences (HTW) (Author)
  • Florian Niebling - , University of Würzburg (Author)

Abstract

The ongoing digitization of historical photographs in archives allows investigating the quality, quantity, and distribution of these images. However, the exact interior and exterior camera orientations of these photographs are usually lost during the digitization process. The proposed method uses content-based image retrieval (CBIR) to filter exterior images of single buildings in combination with metadata information. The retrieved photographs are automatically processed in an adapted structure-from-motion (SfM) pipeline to determine the camera parameters. In an interactive georeferencing process, the calculated camera positions are transferred into a global coordinate system. As all image and camera data are efficiently stored in the proposed 4D database, they can be conveniently accessed afterward to georeference newly digitized images by using photogrammetric triangulation and spatial resection. The results show that the CBIR and the subsequent SfM are robust methods for various kinds of buildings and different quantity of data. The absolute accuracy of the camera positions after georeferencing lies in the range of a few meters likely introduced by the inaccurate LOD2 models used for transformation. The proposed photogrammetric method, the database structure, and the 4D visualization interface enable adding historical urban photographs and 3D models from other locations.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number1879
JournalRemote sensing
Volume15
Issue number7
Publication statusPublished - 31 Mar 2023
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85152772981
Mendeley 592d361a-7c35-3a8d-8052-26030bfd3aa1

Keywords

Keywords

  • 4D-GIS, Structure-from-Motion, camera orientation, content-based image retrieval, feature matching, historical images

Library keywords