4D Cities: Analyzing, Visualizing, and Interacting with Historical Urban Photo Collections
Grant Schindler, Frank Dellaert · Journal of Multimedia · 2012
Abstract — Vast collections of historical photographs are being digitally archived and placed online, providing an objective record of the last two centuries that remains largely untapped. In this work, we propose that time-varying 3D models can pull together and index large collections of images while also serving as a tool of historical discovery, revealing new information about the locations, dates, and contents of historical images. In particular, we use computer vision techniques to tie together large sets of historical photographs of a given city into a consistent 4D model of the city: a 3D model with time as an additional dimension. Index Terms — 3d reconstruction, structure from motion, historical photographs, image-based rendering I.