Measurement of fragments with MRI and relic restoration using virtual reality technologies.

Many relics from ruins are small fragments and work is required to restore their original shapes in order to research, analyze, or display them. However, such work is very difficult, and there are problems associated with handling the relics without causing damage and not being able to disassemble the relics once restored, due to the use of fixing agents and the like. The purpose of this paper is to construct a virtual reality environment inside a computer, reconstruct the three-dimensional shape of a relic inside the virtual reality environment, and construct an environment for restoring the relic without using the original relic. The three-dimensional shape of the fragment is measured using MRI. The image data thus obtained are converted into polygon data by image processing to be reconstructed in the virtual reality environment. The fragments reconstructed inside the virtual reality environment are put into their original shape by assembling them using a data glove. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 31(4): 52–62, 2000 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]