Super high resolution 3D imaging and efficient visualization

The authors describe and demonstrate technology for creating super high resolution (SHR) and 3D digital content in a variety of applications, including museum artificts and galleries, archeology, anthropology, art design and heritage conservation. The hardware can capture minute details of static scenes in a composite panoramic format with details surpassing the human eye. We also propose an approach to storing SHR images for efficient retrieval over bandwidth limited networks, such as the Internet. Regions of interest (ROIs) specified by users are stored in multiple levels of detail hierarchy. This hierarchy can be created by analyzing the contrast, texture or other feature changes with varying levels of resolution and creating a hierarchy of ROIs. The depth of the hierarchy for a given ROI is determined by following the changes in the contrast (or other feature) gradient over adjacent levels. An implementation of the browser for virtual museums is also presented. In addition to browsing images, our software provides the ability to support "interactive story telling". As viewers interact with a picture using a mouse, the descriptions of objects in the scene appear, depending on the location of the mouse and the level of detail in the scene. Finally, the "Zoomage" tools can be used by academic researchers for various applications including object recognition, digital archiving, accurate stereo reconstruction, and 3D visualization