Fisheye photogrammetry: Tests and methodologies for the survey of narrow spaces

Abstract

The research illustrated in this article aimed at identifying a good standard methodology to survey very narrow spaces during 3D investigation of Cultural Heritage. It is an important topic in today's era of BIM modelling applied to Cultural Heritage. Spaces like staircases, corridors and passages are very common in the architectural or archaeological fields, and obtaining a 3D-oriented survey of those areas can be a very complex task when completeness of the model and high precision are requested. Photogrammetry appears to be the most promising solution in terms of versatility and manoeuvrability also considering the quality of the required data. Fisheye lenses were studied and tested in depth because of their significant advantage in the field of view if compared with rectilinear lenses. This advantage alone can be crucial to reduce the total amount of photos and, as a consequence, to obtain manageable data, to simplify the survey phase and to significantly reduce the elaboration time. In order to overcome the main issue that arise when using fisheye lenses, which is the lack of rules that can be employed to design the survey, a general mathematical formulation to precisely estimate the GSD (Ground Sampling Distance) for every optical projection is presented here. A complete survey of a real complex case study was performed in order to test and stress the proposed methodology, and to handle a fisheye-based survey from beginning to end: the photogrammetric survey of the Minguzzi Staircase. It is a complex service spiral-staircase located in the Duomo di Milano with a total height of 25 meters and characterized by a narrow walkable space about 70 centimetres wide.