Our Technology–Spherical Panoramas

High-resolution Panoscan imagery is best known for its use in forensic work associated with crime scene investigation (http://www.crime-photo.com/). The West Semitic Research Project has adapted the use of the Panoscan camera for capturing cultural heritage sites, most particularly medieval painted churches in the Troodos Mountains in Cyprus. In such documentation, a 360-degree Panoscan view is captured in high resolution as a quick but very effective means to document and objectively preserve an entire room. More importantly, the scene is captured as a whole in a single 360-degree pass in a matter of a few minutes. (In contrast, interpolated, stitched images—e.g., the images produced by the Gigapan system—take a long time to produce and are far more likely to introduce error—and, even more seriously, error of a type that appears imperceptible to the user.) A Panoscan image can be processed so that an observer can stand in the position of the camera and look anywhere in the documented space (including straight up and straight down). Detailed (close-up) images or video can then be linked to specific areas represented in the Panoscan imagery as “hotspots.” This preserves the entire visual environment with complete integrity, allowing investigators to study the scene in context, months and even years later.