Pedius

Restoration of wall paintings (frescoes) from fragments found at archaeological sites is a demanding task as there is usually a large number of fragments of various shapes and sizes, the fragments are damaged, and the wall paintings are incomplete, with many missing parts. To make the restoration procedure easier, we developed a computer-aided system called Pedius.

Pedius enables digitalisation, recording, and assistance in reassembling the fragments. Since the fragments are manipulated on a computer screen, their physical manipulation in a sand-box is not needed any longer. As a result, less time is spent and there is no further damage to the fragments. For the digitalisation and recording of the fragments found, the user has to provide their digital images, whereas the system identifies their properties such as the size and colours and enters these properties into a database. The characteristics of the system being particularly useful include the support for alternative compositions of the same groups of fragments, their comparison and merging, which all leads to better results than a simple linear reassembly of fragments. The system has been successfully deployed in restoring parts of Roman wall paintings from over 9000 fragments.