A study day in honor of Prof. Franco Ugo Rollo

Next week, on November 26, will be held a study day in honor of Prof. Franco Ugo Rollo, the famous anthropologist at the University of Camerino who sadly left us this year.

I have been invited to participate in the event, which will take place in Ascoli Piceno and Monsampolo del Tronto, where the Professor analyzed the mummy which are now exposed in the Museum of the Crypt of the S. Mary Church.

During the first session in Ascoli (in the morning) Prof. Gino Fornaciari (University of Pisa) will give a presentation titled "Fra principi e mummie: le origini della paleopatologia moderna" (en: "Between princes and mummies: the origin of modern palaeopathology". Later, Marco Samadelli, of EURAC, will speak about "Life Traces. Alla ricerca della vita nel microcosmo: batteri psicrofili e psicrotolleranti nella mummia dei ghiacci" (en: "Life Traces. Searching the life into the microcosm: psychrophilic  and psicrotollerant bacteria in the ice mummy"). Before the lunch break I will talk about "Volti in byte: le tecnologie digitali per la ricostruzione dei volti del passato" (en "Faces in bytes: new digital technologies for the forensic facial reconstruction of historical figures").

The second session will take place in Monsampolo, with a guided tour in the Museum of the St. Mary's crypt.

The event is organized by the University of Camerino (Scuola di Bioscienze e Medicina Veterinaria; Scuola di Scienze e Tecnologie, Corso di Laurea in Tecnologie e diagnostica per la conservazione e il restauro) and the municipalities of Ascoli Piceno and Monsampolo del Tronto. 

IMHO the study day promises to be interesting and it is worth to attend for people living in the nearby. For more information I publish here the official poster:

The poster of the event

Tothmea - the Egyptian mummy in Brazil

In May 18 will happen in Egyptian and Rosicrucian Museum in the city of Curitiba, Brazil, the "Feliz Dia da Múmia 2" (Mummy's Happy Day 2).

This will be a conference about Tothmea, an Egyptian mummy exposed on the same museum.

The archaeologist Dr. Moacir Elias Santos, will talk about the history of the mummy. Starting with her coming from Egypt, the passage arounf USA until the arrive to Brazil.

And I'll talk about the process of forensic facial reconstruction using almost only free software (we had to use 123D Catch because I still had not mastered the PPT).

This is the first time a mummy reconstructed from this team is formally exposed.

So, I let here my invitation to you.

A big hug!

Converting a video into a 3D mesh and reconstructing a face

The technology of SfM allow you convert, with great precision and quality, some photos into a 3D mesh.

The problem is when you don't have the photos and need to find other ways to reconstruct an object.

Fortunatelly, the Python Photogrammetry Toolbox (SfM) works well in a couple of possibilities, and like you saw in the video above, also with this type of media.

The video downloaded, shows the Budapest Múmia Projekt of the Szépművészeti Múzeum.

This project was a multidisciplinary effort not only to reconstruct the face of the mummies, but the panorama of their past lifes too.

To put the object in the scale, I use other video that show the CT-Scan with a scale at side.

Even working with a low quality reconstructed mesh, the result of the reconstruction was relatively compatible with the oficial bust made by Dr. Kustár Ágnes.

If you wanna see the step-by-step of the process, I created an album and shared it here: https://plus.google.com/photos/115430171389306289690/albums/5856903432134303473

I hope you enjoy.

A big hug and I see you in the next!

Forensic Facial Reconstruction of Virtual Mummy (1997)

Indeed, according the Virtual Mummy's official site, the CT-Scan was made in 1991, so it have more than twenty years! 

I choosed the year of 1997 because it was the creation of Virtual Mummy, a project where some researchers of University of Hamburg-Eppendorf shared a couple of interactive .MOV files used to reconstruct this mummy.

The original project can be visited here: http://www.voxel-man.de/gallery/virtual_mummy/

The links of the interactive movies can be viewed here: http://www.voxel-man.de/gallery/virtual_mummy/scenes.html

I was not able to find a lot information about the mummy. Only that she was 30 years old when died, more than 2300 years ago.

I would like to register the power of Blender's video editor to select the area of interest and isolate it.

In this case, the little area of the CT-Scan.

Even with the little dimensions of the CT-Scan I was able to get a good quality of 3D reconstruction using IMG2DCM and InVesalius.

To put the model in the right proportions, I used the images inside this article: http://www.uke.de/institute/medizinische-informatik/downloads/institut-medizinische-informatik/pommert-mc1991.pdf

With the skull in my hands, the reconstruction was done.

I hope it can be useful and enjoyable for you, like was to me.

A big hug and I see you in the next article!