ACCURACY ANALYSIS OF ESTIMATED CAMERA ORIENTATION PARAMETERS OF HISTORICAL IMAGES – CASE STUDY OF GEORG-SCHUMANN-BAU IN DRESDEN (GERMANY)

Abstract. Digitalization in archives provides access to an ever-increasing amount of historical photographs. As most of these are not taken by photogrammetric experts it is of interest if these images can be integrated into photogrammetric workflows in order to use them for advanced visualizations. While the pose estimation of historical images can be solved using feature matches retrieved by neural networks it is still unclear how accurate the determined poses are. This contribution tries to provide a reference for unordered historical photo collections with additional contemporary images using the example of the Georg-Schumann-Bau in Dresden, Germany. Therefor, a calibrated camera is used to take images of the building with the idea to enhance the estimated camera parameters of historical images in a combined model. This reference can then be used for comparison with a model created using exclusively historical images. Only half of the estimated poses are below 10 meters compared to the reference which falls behind expectations. Nonetheless, it is possible to use the estimated poses for evaluating aggregations of historical images.