Virtual Restoration of Archaeological Artifacts

The task of restoring the look of an artifact as it used to be thousands of years ago, is a fascinating task, for a variety of reasons. The first reason is the very nature of the task of generating information that is not in the input. Second, the condition the artifacts are found—eroded, broken and noisy—differ from those of natural images in two dimensions or smooth geometries in three dimensions. Finally, datasets from which algorithms may learn, are rarely available; and even when available they are small. These aspects make state-of-the-art general algorithms prohibitive in the archaeological domain and special methods need to be developed. This chapter focuses on four sub-problems of restoration: reassembly, reconstruction of artifacts from drawings, re-colorization, and ancient document enhancement. It reviews our recent advances in terms of methods and results.