The Use of Digital Pattern Recognition Techniques for Virtual Reconstruction of Eroded and Visually Complicated Archeological Geometric Patterns

For the purpose of cultural heritage preservation, the task of reconstructing eroded and visually complicated architectural geometrical patterns is facing many practical challenges. Existing recording techniques have many limitations when dealing with patterns that are deteriorated or visually unclear. Unfortunately, until today, the task of reconstructing these patterns is still performed manually, or with the aid of some basic drafting software, which consumes time, effort and money. This study explores one possible solution, through utilizing digital techniques for reconstructing detailed historical Islamic geometric patterns. Its main hypothesis is that digital techniques offer many advantages over the human eye in terms of recognizing subtle differences in light and color. The objective of the study is to design, test and evaluate an automatic visual tool for identifying deteriorated archaeological Islamic geometrical patterns, and then restoring them digitally, for the purpose of producing accurate 2D reconstructed metric models. An experimental approach is used to develop, test and evaluate the specialized software. The proposed method was proven to be successful in capturing the accurate structural geometry of the deteriorated straight-lines patterns generated based on the octagon-square basic grid. This research also concluded that it is possible to apply the same conceptual method to reconstruct all two-dimensional Islamic geometric patterns. Moreover, the same methodology can be applied to reconstruct many other pattern systems. The conceptual framework proposed by this study can serve as a platform for developing professional software related to historic preservation.