Archaeology in 3D: Exploring Differences in Photogrammetric Models Created with Popular Structure-from-Motion (SfM) Archaeological Software from both Drone and Terrestrial Photography

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this study, Structure-from-Motion(SfM) photogrammetric 3D models were created of mid- 19th century historic house ruins. Tyler house (Mound, TX) and Eyrie house (Holyoke, MA) have similar stone construction but dramatically different environmental contexts. The aim of this study was to compare point-cloud differences in, and the benefits and drawbacks of, popular SfM archaeological software. Specifically, comparisons were done through both metric and interpretive output, also addressing the difference in rendered models by acquisition method: drone and terrestrial photography. AgiSoft’s PhotoScan (v. 1.4) and Autodesk ReCap Photo (v. 19) were employed and CloudCompare (v. 2.9.1) was used to compare cloud-cloud distances. The average distance between points and standard deviation were calculated between model pairs, and a Gaussian distribution was fit to each comparison to examine the distribution of points. For the paired models, clouds were accurate to within 0.03 cm, but had varying degrees of standard deviation. This is likely due to differences in methodology, such as degree of overlap in photos between acquisition methods, and slight differences in the rendering parameters of each program. These results may help the archaeological community in selecting software, increasing awareness of point-cloud and user-induced variations, and acquisition method when recording archaeological sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25540