Optical measurement techniques for the digital preservation, documentation and analysis of cultural heritages

Nowadays the digital documentation and 3D modeling of Cultural Heritage objects and sites is receiving much more attention. This is due from one side to the large amount of technologies and data available for fast, detailed and quick documentation and from the other side to the great interest of restorators and archaeologists towards instruments able to provide innovative inspections and diagnostic results. The correct selection, combination and integration of the available techniques requires great experience and the need to combine them comes from the complexity of some heritage structures and the lack of a single method capable of providing satisfactory results in all measuring conditions. In this work we report our use of consumer digital cameras, range sensors and infrared thermography data for the documentation of heritage objects. The objective is to give an overview of the different techniques and the used methodology for the digital recording of detailed objects, monuments and large structures.