Shown to the right are a pair of photographs taken from each end of Sennedjem's burial chamber. The extensive distortions are due to the curved ceiling, the wide-angle lens, and the inherent effects of perspective projection. Under these conditions it is nearly impossible to obtain a complete distortion-free view of the burial chamber.

In order to create a single distortion-free mosaic, we digitally estimate and remove these distortions. To see how this works consider the pair of images of neighboring ceiling panels shown here. The distortions are estimated by first specifying the initial (yellow circles) and desired (red circles) position of several points in the image. A non-linear mapping characterizing the distortions is then automatically estimated. The distortions are removed by warping the initial image according to this mapping as shown here. Where necessary, the aspect ratio is adjusted and variations in lighting are manually corrected by locally adjusting the color/lightness. Finally, neighboring images are combined by manually overlaying their common parts and removing the overlapping areas.

We begin with sixteen photographs with nearly full coverage of Sennedjem's burial chamber. The distortions in each image are removed and then seamlessly combined to form a complete and distortion-free view of the entire burial chamber as shown to the right (at 1/40 resolution). These images can then be combined with a three-dimensional computer model of the burial chamber giving an immersive experience of this chamber's beauty [Quicktime Movies: 310x240 (18MB); 155x120 (9MB)]