3D acquisition of historical coins and its application area in numismatics
Sebastian Zambanini, Mario Schlapke, Michael Hödlmoser, Martin Kampel · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2010
Nowadays, 2D photography is the common technique for the documentation and digitalization of historical coin inventories. However, by using 2D photography a huge amount of information is lost due to the projection of a 3D structure onto a 2D image. A solution to this problem would be the use of 3D scanning devices to obtain accurate 3D models of the coins. In this paper we show results of scanning 24 historical coins from the Roman and medieval age using a high-accuracy active stereo scanner. We furthermore highlight the various benefits of this acquisition method for coin documentation, coin measurement and coin recognition. The results show that accurate 3D models can be obtained despite the small size and high reflectance of historical coins.