On the potential of Simulation enhancec conservation of CH artifacts

The documentation of cultural heritage has long been a useful guide for conservators and restorers. Following the latest advances in HW & SW technologies, the conservation science is keeping up the pace via the incorporation of state-of-the-art digitized analysis to facilitate its modern challenges. In this direction, the current paper proposes a complete pipeline for augmenting the work of conservators by enhancing their intuition and the non-destructive requirements of it. In particular, the current study presents an end-to-end workflow that starts with the digitization of the shape of a mid-sized cultural object and simulates the degradation on its surface based on pre-trained material-specific aging models. The proposed system comprises a digitization interface that utilizes a low-cost RGB-D sensor registered with a rotary stage for the extraction of the global 3D textured model and a particle-based aging approach for the spatio-temporal simulation of the changes in both the appearance and structure. The simulation is controlled via both environmental (a.k.a. weathering phenomena) and material specific parameters. An original metallic sculpture has been used as a case study and the qualitative results presented in each intermediate processing step, demonstrate the overall functionality and the promising potential of the suggested approach.