The statue, 12 cm high and bronze made, was reconstructed using 167 successive longitudinal planes.
Roman statue belonging to the National Museum of Romanian History.
The statue, 12 cm high and bronze made, was reconstructed using 167 successive longitudinal planes.
The full 3D volume, containing about 6.4 million voxels, was analysed using a special software package made by us, based on “direct matrix graphic representation method”.
Reconstruction fineness and detail quality are remarkable so that the internal and even the external analysis may be directly carried out using computer’s display. During analysis, various interesting internal details, obtained by adequate choice of positions and plotted surfaces, were pointed out.
Software “cutting”, performed through the statue in some interesting areas, showed hidden
internal details. Its medium area was investigated in order to check the hypothesis that the
statue was made by joining two pieces. The hypothesis was denied by 3D tomographic analysis as
may be observed in the illustrating images that show the continuity of the inner surface.
Also, 3D analysis of the statue pointed clearly out an interesting detail, namely the break
and the repair in the area of the left leg, the repairer gluing (possibly by means of resin)
the clearance between pieces.
Using the data processing programme, the gluing material was software “removed” and after reconstructing the remaining area, a perfectly circular hole appeared. It seems that the hole was carried out by means of a 2 mm spiral drill, possibly with the intention to insert some reinforcement bearing, but subsequently that intention was aborted for unknown reasons.
Here is an example of a 3D animation of the statue.
36 successive images were computed from incremental view angles and then assembled together
in a short movie (510 Kbytes AVI file, it may take a while to be transferred).