Simon BRENNER | Sebastian ZAMBANINI | Robert SABLATNIG
In this paper, we address the 3D reconstruction of historical coins by means of Photometric Stereo. We investigate the influence of the number and arrangement of lights to the reconstruction quality by comparing mean angular errors on 22 historical coin models. Our results demonstrate that 6 lights circularly placed at an optimal elevation angle do not show a significant loss of reconstruction quality compared to a full semispherical dome setup with 54 lights. This represents a considerable saving of acquisition time and system complexity when it comes to the mass digitization of historical coins.