10th Asian Regional Conference of IAEG (2015)

Recent trend about photogrammetry and computer vision: 3-D visualization frommultiple 2-D images and application to Yokosuka Arsenal Dry Dock
Yukiyasu FUJII(1), Takaharu SHOGAKI(2) and Kunio WATANABE (3)(1) Fukada Geological Institute, Tokyo, Japan
E-mail: fujii@fgi.or.jp(2) National Defense Academy of Japan, (3) Saitama University, Japan
Abstract
Both Photogrammetry and Structure from Motion (SfM) are techniques that cangenerate three-dimensional (3-D) visualization from multiple two-dimensional (2-D)
images. Historically, photogrammetry has been developed to make topographic maps fromaerial photographs. Recently, this technique has been completely developed as digital
photogrammetry, and it has been applied to various objects. On the other hand, SfM is avery new technique which has been developed in the field of computer vision. Bothtechniques were applied to Yokosuka Arsenal No.1 Dry Dock, and complete 3-D model
was generated from multiple 2-D images. Both techniques are useful to make 3-D surface
model of the object. For the technique of photogrammetry, it is needed to put control points
on the object to calculate the camera positions and rotations. On the other hand, it is very
easy for SfM to make a 3-D model. Because control points are automatically detected in
2-D images by the method of computer vision. The progress of these techniques, related tophotogrammetry and computer vision, are very fast. It could be rightly applied to theobjects related to engineering geology, and should contribute to this field.
Keywords: digital camera, image analysis, Structure from Motion, Bundle Adjustment
1.

Introduction
In this article, photogrammetry and Structurefrom Motion (SfM) have been applied to a historicalstructure with building stones. Both techniques arekinds of image analysis for measurement, whichgenerate 3-D models from multiple 2-D images.
Historical structure is Yokosuka Arsenal No. 1 Dry
Dock, which is constructed about 150 years ago with
andesitic building stones. Some building stones havebeen damaged by salt weathering, and the surfaces
are deteriorated by erosion (Fujii et al., 2014).

Many historical monuments and structures arecomposed of rock materials, for example stone walls
and tombstone. Those, “stone cultural properties”
have been deteriorated by weathering and erosion
through many years. Engineering Geologist cancontribute to conservation and preservation for thosestone cultural properties.
Generally archaeological investigation is startedbydocumentationforculturalproperties.
Conventional archaeological documentation has been
conducted by photography, sketch, and plane table
surveying. Recently survey equipment and method
has been developed dramatically. Therefore,
three-dimensional (3-D) documentation has been
applied to many sites and monuments by the methodof laser beam profiler and image measurement. These
new technologies need much time and some work
functions compared to conventional methods.
However, documentation and measurement can beconducted simultaneously with these techniques.
Application of these technologies are also able tocontribute to analyze the mechanism of weatheringand erosion for historical sites and monuments (Fujiiet al., 2009).

2.

MethodIn this section, introductory explanations forphotogrammetry and SfM are described in following
subsections.
2.1 Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry is a science to measure objects
on photographs (Linder 2003). Obviously, a singlephotograph has only two-dimensional information, as
it is a two-dimensional plane. If two photographs ofthe same object are taken from different directions
and locations, a stereoscopic picture is formed and
3-D information of the object can be gain. The
photographs are called as a pair of stereo-photographs.

1

10th Asian Regional Conference of IAEG (2015)

Historically, photogrammetry has been used toconstruct topographic maps from stereo-photographic
pairs of aerial photographs. This technique can also
be applied to close-range mapping with a hand-heldcamera (Atkinson 2003).
Data for camera locations and directions when
taking the photographs are used to get thethree-dimensional information. However, it is very
difficult to get accurate locations and directions at thesame time when taking the photographs. Before
taking the photographs, many control points were puton the surface of the object. Generally, coordinates of
the control points essential to the photogrammetricevaluation were determined by the use of a geodetic
Total Station (TS). The camera positions anddirections can be inversely calculated from thecontrol points by means of a least squares adjustment.
This technique is called as “bundle adjustment”. 3-Ddigital photogrammetric software is employed forbundle adjustment and to get 3-D information on thesurface of the object.

Fig. 1 Yokosuka Arsenal No.1 Dry Dockbecause it’s the oldest dry dock with building stones.
In addition, its construction methods and techniques
have been applied to the following construction ofJapanese dry docks. The size of the dock is 140
meters length, 30 meters width and 10 meters depth(see Fig.5; result from SfM analysis).
The dry dock No. 1 is still in use today. However,the surfaces of building stones have been weatheredby seawater and winds. In addition, water leakage
from the joints of the building stones can be identified
in some areas near the gate. It is needed to document
the dock and survey its stability to preserve andconserve it for the future.

2.2 Structure from Motion
The last three decades have seen a dramaticincrease in the capabilities of 3-D computer visionalgorithms, which include advances in featurecorrespondence, structure from motion, andimage-based modeling (Snavely et al., 2007). The
development of effective structure from motion
techniques, which aim to simultaneously reconstruct
the unknown 3-D scene structure and camera
locations and orientations from a set of featurecorrespondences has been successfully used.
More recently, related techniques fromphotogrammetry such as bundle adjustment havemade their way into computer vision and are now
regarded as the standard for performing optimal 3-D
reconstruction from correspondences (Snavely et al.,2007).
Feature detection and matching techniques has
been especially developed recently, and wide baseline
matching, i.e., the automatic matching of images
taken from widely different views can be succeed(Snavely et al., 2007). Therefore, detecting thecontrol points for photogrammetry can beautomatically conducted by means of SfM.

3.1 Case of Photogrammetry
Fig. 2 shows a flow chart for the photogrammetricanalysis. Fig. 3 shows planning to take photographs(multiple 2-D images) of the dry dock. Control Points
are sticker-type ones. Each one is 90 mm size
black-color square with 30 mm size white-color circle
in the center (Fig.3). They can stick on the wall of thedock (Fig.2-I). Single Lens Reflex Camera with fixed
focal length lens (c = 35 mm) was used for taking
multiple 2-D images of the dock (Fig.2-II). Multiple
2-D images of the south wall had been taken from thetop of the north wall at 5 meters intervals (B = 5 m).

I: Setting of Control Points(It is not always necessary)↓
II: Taking Photographs(Photo-Sequences)↓
III: Detecting Control Points(Matching Same Points on
Photo-Sequences)↓
IV: Bundle Adjustment(Calculating Camera Locations andDirections)↓
V: Image-Based Modeling(3-D Visualization)3.

Application to Yokosuka Arsenal
No.1 Dry Dock
There are 6 dry docks in the United States Naval
Base, Yokosuka city, Japan. Three of them, from No.
1 to No. 3, have been constructed with buildingstones. The oldest one is dry dock No. 1 (Fig. 1: thisphoto was taken from the top of the gate) which had
been constructed from 1867 to 1871 under thesupervision of French engineers, Verny and Florent.
It is one of the most important constructions in Japan,

Fig. 2 Flow chart for photogrammetry2

10th Asian Regional Conference of IAEG (2015)

Fig. 3 Plan to take photographs (photo-sequence) of the dry dock2-D images of the north wall had been taken from thetop of the south wall. Distance from camera locations
to each wall is from 20 to 25 meters (H = 22.5).
About 50 photographs had been taken for each wall.
Therefore, about 100 photographs had been totallytaken as photo-sequence of the dock.
The resolution of photogrammetry is calculated asfollows,

 XY  H / c   CCD(1)

 Z  H / B   XY

(2)

photogrammetric software. Control points whichwere included in photographs were detected on thephotographs (Fig.2-III). Camera locations anddirections could be inversely calculated by bundle
adjustment (Fig.2-IV), and the residual error is lessthan 10 mm. The photogrammetric software canmatch the same position on multiple 2-D images andgenerate 3-D points in the computer (Fig.2-V).
Finally, 3-D surface model could be generated andphoto-images were put on the surface (Fig. 4).
3.2 Case of Structure from Motion
Workflow of SfM is very similar to the case ofphotogrammetry. However control points areautomatically detected by image matching in SfM
software (Fig.2-III). In this research case,“VisualSFM” was applied to analyze the same
multiple 2-D images of the dock. VisualSFM is aGUI application, made by Dr. Changchang Wu, for
3-D reconstruction of multiple photo-sequence using

In these equations,  XY is the resolution parallelto the photo-plane,  Z is the resolution vertical to thephoto-plane. The sensor of the camera (  CCD ) has aresolution of 0.0079 mm. Therefore  XY is about 5mm, and  Z is about 23 mm.
Multiple 2-D images had been installed into a
computer and analyzed by a commercialFig. 4 3-D surface model of the dry dock by photogrammetry

310th Asian Regional Conference of IAEG (2015)

SfM. The reconstruction system integrates some
programs including SIFT, Bundle Adjustment and soon. VisualSFM is a non-commercial program. It canbe downloaded from the web site of Dr. Wu. Fig. 5
shows the 3-D reconstruction result of multiple
camera locations and 3-D point cloud of the dock. To
generate more dense reconstruction of point cloud or3-D surface model of the dock, it is needed anothersoftware or program.
4.

Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the support from theU.S. Naval Base Yokosuka for investigating the drydock. This research is one of the productions by theacademic committee on the technical evaluation ofhistorical structures constructed during and after theEdo era, The Japanese Geo-Technical Society Kanto
branch.

Summary and Conclusion

References

Historically, photogrammetry had been used toconstruct topographic maps from aerial photographs.
Recently aerial laser beam profiler has been usedinstead of photogrammetry. In the last decadeterrestrial laser beam equipment has become
reasonable price and convenient. Therefore the use ofphotogrammetry had been declined with increasing
demand of laser beam profiler. However thedevelopment of computer vision science enable us touse image analysis more reasonable. In addition, it’smuch easier to use compare to traditional
photogrammetry. Because the control points can beautomatically detected by SfM. However the result ofbundle adjustment (residual error) is not known in the
program of VisualSfM.
Development of the technology is very fast.
Therefore we should follow the progress of thesetechnique related to photogrammetry and computer
vision. In addition, it should be applied to andcontribute to the fields of engineering geology.

Atkinson, K.B. (2003): Close Range Photogrammetry
and Machine Vision. Whittles Pub, London. 384 pp.
Fujii, Y., Fodde, E., Watanabe, K. and Murakami K.
(2009):
DigitalPhotogrammetryfor
theDocumentation of Structural Damage in Earthen
Archaeological Sites: the case of Ajina Tepa,
Tajikistan, Engineering Geology, Vol. 105, 124-133.
doi: 10.1016/j.enggeo.2008.11.012.
Fujii, Y., Shogaki, T., Miyakawa, M. and Kikuchi K.
(2014): Deterioration of Rock Materials andDocumentation by Photogrammetry in Yokosuka
Arsenal No. 1 Dry Dock, The Japanese
Geotechnical Society, 62-4, 14-17 (in Japanese).
Linder, W. (2003): Digital Photogrammetry Theoryand Applications. Springer, Berlin. 189 pp.
Snavely N., Seltz, S. and Szeliski, R. (2007):
Modeling the World from Internet PhotoCollections, International Journal of Computer
Vision, DOI 10.1007/s11263-007-0107-3.

Gate
140 m
10 m

30 m
Fig. 5 Perspective reconstruction view of the dry dock photo-sequence by SfM

4