Welcome to the experimental content based retrieval engine which operates in a real time 3D environment. A 3D pottery museum has been implemented as a case study. The visitor can freely navigate within the museum and perform queries-by-example using any of the exhibited artefacts. Animated arrows will appear over morphologicaly similar items. At the same time the user can monitor on the top map the similarity ranking scores and the positions of the morphological similar artefacts.

At the moment the system uses our VMBA 3D descriptor which is designed for vessels and generally surfaces of revolution and thus the available artefacts are limited to pottery. With the use of other 3D shape descriptors the system can be expanded to other domains such as architectural structures, facade features, etc.

It should be mentioned that the 3D scene is manually segmented into separated 3D model entities (hierarchical structure) which properties such as their digital shape signatures (descriptors), their coordinates within the 3D space and other information are encoded into metadata within a native XML database (eXist db).

In brief, when the user initiates a query-by-example, the client forwards the object's ID to the server. The server compares the digital signatures of the query-object against all other scene objects using a similarity metric and returns a sorted similarity ranking scores list (ID's of the similar objects).The system is based on PHP and Quest3D technologies. The 3D model of the museum has been build in Blender.

The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the Cultural Heritage Unit of the Cultural and Educational Technology Institute/Research Centre ‘Athena’ for their support in this work, Dr. Horn-yeu Shiaw, Prof. Robert Jacob and Prof. Gregory R. Crane from Tufts University, the Centre of Advanced Spatial Technologies of the Hampson Museum, Carlos Hernandez Esteban and Francis Schmitt from Telecom Paris for providing us with copies of their digitised 3D vessel collections.

To enter the 3D pottery museum using an IE browser click on the following link
Take me to the virtual museum
(notice that a pop up window will rise).

Additional material related to this project can be found at the following links

Content based retrieval in the 3D reconstruction of the old city of Xanthi
Experimental 3D Pottery Content Based Retrieval Engine

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This work is part of the 03ED679 research project, implemented within the framework of the “Reinforcement Programme of Human Research Manpower” (PENED) and co financed by National and Community Funds (25% from the Greek Ministry of Development - General Secretariat of Research and Technology and 75% from E.U.- European Social Fund).