From Shape-from-Shading Through e-Heritage

This talk overviews my research activities from the shape-from-shading through the current e-Heritage project, which digitizes tangible and intangible heritage, analyzes such data for archaeological research and displays in the cloud computer for preservation and promotion. I began my post-doctoral career at MIT working on shape-from-shading under BKP Horn. Later, I began a project at CMU, with Raj Reddy and Takeo Kanade, to obtain not only shape but also reflectance. This attempt later grew into image-based modeling. After returning to Japan, I applied these modeling and analyzing techniques for the preservation, analysis, and promotion of cultural heritage. In this talk, I will not only cover current results but also overview the flow of research conducted along this line with emphasis on what were the motivations and how each research step moved into the next level of research; I will also try to extract key lessons learned through these activities. This is an extended version of my distinguished researcher award talk at Barcelona ICCV with the addition of new archaeological findings obtained from the analysis of the e-Heritage data.