Controlled Texturing of Historical Images on Three-Dimensional Models

Abstract

This paper presents a user-guided procedure for transferring chromatic information from historical images to modern 3D point clouds. The method, developed as an evolution of previous approaches, involves the orientation of the point cloud according to the historical viewpoint, the generation of a synthetic perspective image, the selection of homologous points, and the application of a twodimensional affine transformation, followed by back-projection of color information onto the point cloud. In addition, the
method incorporates quantitative criteria for assessing alignment quality, based on residual analysis and the identification of outliers using statistical thresholds
The software pipeline is implemented in MATLAB and is modular, consisting of three independent scripts PreCloud, PreImg and Historica), allowing explicit control of the main processing stages and adaptability to different data types. The procedure ensures metric consistency and repeatability, even when dealing with historical images characterized by heterogeneous quality and unknown acquisition geometry.
The proposed approach enables the integration of historical iconographic, photographic, or cartographic information into modern three-dimensional models, making these data comparable with current observations and suitable for quantitative analysis.