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Get aligned and track the CHANGEs

Get aligned and track the CHANGEs

To understand what changes the cultural heritage objects undergo over time, a tremendous amount of data needs to be compared, analysed and stored. Scans of e.g. surfaces or minerals generates a lot of data and the datasets are often in different formats and domains. There is a need for these data to be aligned and Early Stage Researcher in CHANGE Evdokia Saiti works at NTNU – the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on how to automate this process. She recently published a paper describing the challenges of multimodal 3D registration.

Saiti’s PhD project is all about developing registration techniques for differential and multimodal data. What does that actually mean? – “My project’s goal is to automate the tedious process of registering differential and multi-modal data of cultural heritage objects”, Saiti says. – “The research has two main axis, the first one is to develop algorithms for aligning successive surface scans of 3D objects across time and the latter is to identify efficient multimodal registration algorithms without any prior knowledge of correspondence between the modalities. The alignment methods to be developed are going to assess and monitor any change of which Cultural Heritage artifacts are faced during their exposure to the atmosphere and their conservation treatments”, Saiti explains.

Evdokia Saiti started to work as an Early Stage Researcher at NTNU early 2021 and she has already reviewed the state-of the-art methods for multi-modal registration methods and a review paper has been submitted. The paper provides a survey of multi-modal 3D registration methods in an application-independent view. The problem of multi-modal 3D registration has been strictly defined and their applications and registration attributions have been discussed. Multi-modal 3D registration is an interesting and challenging problem with a numerous of different applications in Cultural Heritage digitization and preservation process. A good survey on this topic could help other professionals and researchers who are not familiar in this area to better understand the whole picture.

The CHANGE ESR position Saiti currently holds, was a much sought-after position when advertised. How come this was a good fit for her? Before becoming an Early Stage Researcher, Saiti worked in the telecommunications industry. – “The CHANGE project was the perfect opportunity to combine my main two interests, computer vision and cultural heritage and it was a great challenge on my career path”, she says. – “My main goal is to obtain a high level, up to date relevant knowledge of techniques to study and monitoring changes on Cultural Heritage objects.  Moreover, I’m fascinated by the trends on computer programming and I would like to broaden my programming skills through the topic of my research. Also, the prospect of working and collaborating with researchers from different institutes and having different backgrounds is an interesting and exciting aspect of the CHANGE project. In long term, I’d love to be a true expert on my topic and have expanded my professional network so as to create a plethora of working opportunities in the Cultural Heritage field”, Saiti concludes.