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The Scottish Ten is an ambitious five-year project using cutting edge technology to create exceptionally accurate digital models of Scotland's five UNESCO designated World Heritage Sites (WHS) and five other international heritage sites in order to better conserve and manage them. It has had global impact in terms of both its outputs and the process of research activity including forging intellectual and diplomatic links with our international partners, increasing access to digital surrogates of heritage sites, raising awareness of technological approaches to conservation of world heritage, and contributing to the policies of major heritage organisations across the world.
Virtual Worlds are challenging to develop and deploy in small community settings. Our research into their measurement, design, and usability has allowed us to radically reduce the cost and footprint of a platform needed to support the collaborative creation of content, letting communities share their histories with both local and global audiences. Integrating this platform with an approach to virtual fieldwork lets communities explore authentic recreations of historical scenes, giving new perspectives on cultural heritage that stimulate reflection and understanding across the generations and enhancing the visitor experience by making new modes of interaction available for museums. This has enabled educational and cultural heritage bodies in Scotland to connect with new audiences and increase public participation in local heritage.
This case study describes the innovative 3D Head and Neck learning tool and its impact on teaching in both academic and clinical settings. Since its inception, the 3D Head and Neck project has developed an innovative and rigorous workflow and a learning tool which has had immediate impact on education and training within the NHS and academic sectors in Scotland, directly benefitting dentists, doctors, nurses, surgeons and the full range of allied health professionals underpinning high quality, safe clinical care. This innovative learning technology continues to be vigorously adopted within Scotland and the research methodology developed has led to significant follow-on research.
Research at the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering (DoEng) since 1997 created methods for reconstructing a three-dimensional (3D) model of an object from a single two-dimensional photograph. Metail, a company founded in 2008, sponsored further research at the DoEng and commercialised the results in an online fashion retailing application. Metail enables customers to select an item of clothing and see how they would look wearing it from a variety of angles, having entered just one photograph of themselves and a few basic body measurements. Metail attracted over GBP3.5M investment. Its application is used by Shop Direct, Tesco, Warehouse, Zalando and Dafiti. Sales data shows that the Metail application increases the propensity of customers to buy and reduces the proportion of goods returned.
The introduction of computer vision algorithms that allow creation of stereo 3D content in film and broadcast using conventional 2D monocular video cameras has permitted fundamental advances in the 3D reconstruction of complex real-world dynamic scenes from video, enabling the rendering of stereo views from a single camera view. Technology introduced by Surrey has been used for 3D scene analysis by the UK company, The Foundry, in their film post-production for major Hollywood 3D film productions (Avatar, Harry Potter, Planet of the Apes, Tron, The Hobbit). Since 2007, The Foundry has transformed to become the leading provider of 3D stereo production software tools to the global visual effects industry, growing from 20 to over 200 employees.
The Geometric Modelling and Pattern Recognition (GMPR) Group at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) has developed and patented internationally-known line projection technologies for fast 3D scan, reconstruction and recognition. Three types of impact can be identified: (i) through our patents, we have licensed to companies in Europe and the USA; (ii) these technologies are being transferred to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) across Europe, through the European funded MARWIN and ADMOS projects; and (iii) social and cultural impacts are evidenced by the 3D scanning of representative items from the Museums Sheffield Metalwork Collection which have been made publicly available on the web, and through the `Man of Steel' community project where a landmark sculpture will form a gateway to South Yorkshire and the Sheffield City Region.
UCL's pioneering use of 3D body surface scanning and national anthropometric surveys has had impact in the fashion industry and healthcare. In 2008, a UCL spinout, Sizemic, was founded to sell clothing size charts and fit mannequins based on the UK survey data, helping manufacturers and retailers improve the fit of their clothing, and reduce their product development times and costs. Sizemic now has 10 employees and a turnover of £1m. The research also led to other national sizing surveys, including in Germany (2008/9), Thailand (2009/10) and Mexico (2010), with results used for product development. In 2009, UCL built a prototype 3D-healthcare system for GPs and established a company, ShapeDynamics, to support the platform. The software is being tested at a private healthcare practice in London. Another UCL spinout, Bodymetrics, has commercialised body scanners for use as a clothes-fitting aid in stores.
The Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR) invented a novel method of 3D printing digitally generated ceramics which has enabled different manufacturing companies to improve their product development cycle, processes and economic performance. The method has wider applicability in making rapid model development tools or unique ways of creating large surface topographies that were previously impossible.
As a result of this industrial impact, CFPR has been invited to work with the AHRC and the Technology Strategy Board to influence government policy through the wider dissemination of innovative practice integrating artistic experimentation and industrial methods.
i-DAT has developed an open infrastructure for `harvesting' and visualising data to support collaborative interdisciplinary projects in environmental, social and cultural contexts. Framed as a series of `Operating Systems' this research contributes to the strategic activities of not-for-profit, public, private and community sectors, including Arts Council England, Plymouth City Council, UNESCO Biosphere and World Heritage Sites. Through i-DAT's National Portfolio Organisation status, this research delivers significant audience numbers and new work and contributes to and can be measured against impacts in relation to civil society, cultural life, policy making, public services and, to a lesser extent, economic prosperity.
Research at the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering (DoEng) has enabled accurate positioning to be added to 2D freehand ultrasound probes to enable the acquisition of large coherent blocks of high-resolution 3D ultrasound image data. The software code base developed in the DoEng was licensed to two separate companies, Schallware and MedaPhor, to enable them each to develop an ultrasound training product. Both companies have sold to more than 30 customers worldwide during the REF impact period; the Cambridge software had a key role in contributing to the innovation and quality of the products developed by both companies, and significantly increased the speed at which they were able to bring these products to market.