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Project papers

So far, general project information and specific project progress was communicated in various publications. All of them can be found below. Clicking on the title will initiate their download.


The specific progress on the hard- and software approaches was published in the ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, the International Journal of Heritage in the Digital Era, the ISPRS Archives.

  1. Karel, W., Doneus, M., Verhoeven, G., Briese, C., Ressl, C., Pfeifer, N., 2013. Initiates file downloadOrientAL – Automatic geo-referencing and ortho-rectification of archaeological aerial photographs. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences II-5/W1, 175–180. DOI: 10.5194/isprsannals-II-5-W1-175-2013: detailing the software approach.
  2. Verhoeven, G., Wieser, M., Briese, C., Doneus, M., 2013. Initiates file downloadPositioning in time and space – Cost-effective exterior orientation for airborne archaeological photographs. ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences II-5/W1, 313–318. DOI: 10.5194/isprsannals-II-5-W1-313-2013: detailing the first result of a low-cost hardware approach.
  3. Wieser, M., Verhoeven, G., Briese, C., Doneus, M., Karel, W., Pfeifer, N., 2014. Initiates file downloadCost-effective geocoding with exterior orientation for airborne and terrestrial archaeological photography – possibilities and limitations. International Journal of Heritage in the Digital Era 3 (1), 97–121: this paper is a follow-up paper of the one above (paper 2), but details adtional tests, both terrestrial and airborne.
  4. Karel, W., Doneus, M., Briese, C., Verhoeven, G., Pfeifer, N., 2014. Initiates file downloadInvestigation on the Automatic Geo-Referencing of Archaeological UAV Photographs by Correlation with Pre-Existing Ortho-Photos, in: Proceedings of the ISPRS Technical Commission V Symposium, Riva del Garda, Italy. 23–25 June 2014. ISPRS Archives XL-5, pp. 307–312. DOI: 10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-5-307-2014: this paper builds further on the results presented in paper 1.

For all details on the hardware development and the post-processing of the logged data, it is advised to download the Master thesis of Martin Wieser:

Wieser, M., 2013. Initiates file downloadDirekte Georeferenzierung von Photographien anhand von freier Hardware und quelloffener Software. Master, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna.


One of our papers looked at the influence of the decolourization approach that is used in an SfM algorithm to convert the input colour imagery to greyscale:

Verhoeven, G., Karel, W., Štuhec, S., Doneus, M., Trinks, I., Pfeifer, N., 2015. Initiates file downloadMind your grey tones – examining the influence of decolourization methods on interest point extraction and matching for architectural image-based modelling. In: González-Aguilera, D., Remondino, F., Boehm, J., Kersten, T.P., Fuse, T. (Eds.), Proceedings of 3D-Arch 2015 – 3D Virtual Reconstruction and Visualization of Complex Architectures (ISPRS WG V/4, CIPA), pp. 307–314. (=  ISPRS Archives XL-5/W4)


Additionally, four more general texts have been written:

  1. Doneus, M., Verhoeven, G., Karel, W., Briese, C., Pfeifer, N., Ressl, C., 2013. Initiates file downloadTowards an automated georeferencing and orthorectification of archaeological aerial photographs, in: Archaeological prospection. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Archaeological Prospection, Vienna, Austria. May 29th - June 2nd 2013. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, pp. 380–382: a short text outlining the project, its aims and deliverables.
  2. Verhoeven, G., Doneus, M., Briese, C., Vermeulen, F., 2012. Initiates file downloadMapping by matching: a computer vision-based approach to fast and accurate georeferencing of archaeological aerial photographs. Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (7), 2060–2070. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2012.02.022: a journal article which covers the use of SfM+MVS in aerial archaeology as a new approach to orthorectification aerial images.
  3. Verhoeven, G., Doneus, N., Doneus, M., Štuhec, S. 2015. From pixel to mesh – accurate and straightforward 3D documentation of cultural heritage from the Cres/Lošinj archipelago. In: Proceedings of the Istraživanja na otocima 2012, Mali Lošinj, Croatia, 165-176. In press.
  4. Verhoeven, G., Sevara, C., Karel, W., Ressl, C., Doneus, M., Briese, C., 2013. Initiates file downloadUndistorting the past – New techniques for orthorectification of archaeological aerial frame imagery, in: Corsi, C., Slapšak, B., Vermeulen, F. (Eds.), Good practice in archaeological diagnostics. Non-invasive survey of complex archaeological sites. Natural Science in Archaeology. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 31–67. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-01784-6_3: a book chapter which focuses on several types of archaeological airborne frame images, the distortion factors that are influencing these still images and the necessary steps to compute orthophotographs from them. Rather than detailing the conventional photogrammetric orthorectification workflows, this chapter mainly centres on the use of a SfM+MVS workflow. In addition to a theoretical underpinning of the working principles and algorithmic steps included in both SfM and MVS, real-world imagery originating from traditional and more advanced airborne imaging platforms is used to illustrate the possibilities of such a computer vision-based approach.
FWF-Project P24116-N23:
Automated (ortho)rectification of archaeological aerial photographs

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