# Scanning of Historical Clothes Using 3D Scanners: Comparison of Goals, Tools, and Methods
## 4 Conclusions  
This article discovers and compares methodologies of 3D scanning of historical clothes presented in the literature, in order to determine if a new methodology is needed. In order to answer the research question, How have 3D scanners been used to digitize historical clothes? we established three research objectives:  
RO1: Identify whether studies on this topic exist and how many there are. RO2: Identify the purpose driving the creation of 3D scans and the technology used. RO3: Assess how well the literature describes the 3D scanning procedure. In terms of ROI, after screening, we identified 12 publications on this topic, a mix of journal articles and conference proceedings. The first one dated from 2001, and the remaining 11 were all published between 2012 and 2020. We can only speculate on the reasons why there are so few studies on the 3D scanning of historical clothes. One hypothesis, as stated in Section 1.1, is that the application of 3D scanning technology in the digitization of cultural heritage objects is still a relatively young field and knowledge about these techniques is not widespread. A second hypothesis is that authors simply do not feel it is relevant to publish on this specific type of object (historical clothes), perhaps considering the challenges of scanning these artefacts (such as the problem of shinny surfaces) to be the same as for other objects--in other words, that there is nothing new to be \"discovered\" or published. We would argue that this is not the case, as historical clothes have particular characteristics (e.g., size, texture, and  
Figure 8: Overall quality of the selected studies. Figure 7: The quality of the selected studies. shapable volume) that present specific challenges when it comes to scanning. Last, there is the hypothesis that museums still do not see 3D models as \"relevant\" for certain purposes. As the literature suggests, 2D photographs, 360\({}^{\circ}\) photographic views, 3D CAD models and photogrammetry-based 3D models are often preferred for purposes of dissemination. Regarding RO2, to discover the reasons for 3D scanning, we found that a substantial majority of 3D-scanning projects were carried out for dissemination purposes (eight instances), followed by motivations linked to archiving (four) and research (two). This finding is unsurprising given the rising importance of digital images for facilitating public access to museum collections, whether online (for example, enabling people to explore collections without visiting the museum) or to be deployed in interactive digital media as part of an in-house exhibition. In terms of the technologies used (also covered in RO2), it turned out that 40% of the articles were not, in fact, about true 3D scanning; in fact, they were on photogrammetry, which, according to the scientific literature, is a separate technology. We included them to highlight a degree of confusion among authors as to what does and does not constitute 3D scanning. After photogrammetry, the most common approach was laser scanning, which was discussed in four of the articles. The surprising finding here was the general under-utilization of structured light scanning, which in our opinion is potentially better-suited technology for 3D scanning of historical clothes, at least in comparison to the other scanning technologies identified. Turning to RO3, we found very wide variability in the quality of articles, with 41% classed as good or very good, but 42% described as poor or very poor. Generally speaking, the articles tended to deal with technical issues, such as the hardware and software, quite thoroughly, followed by procedure. Fewer articles gave a thorough description of the objects themselves. However, ultimately, the question of whether the focus is on the technology, the procedure, or the object will depend on the specific topic of a given article and the aims of the research it describes.