Recognition Techniques in Buddhist Iconography and Challenges

Abstract

The idea of preserving and disseminating cultural heritage digitally has led to the use of computing technology in preservation and determination of period-specific features of a artefact of cultural and historical importance. Pattern recognition techniques have been in use for quite some times for extracting feature information. One of the major requirement of archaeologists and art historians is to identify period of origin and age of ancient sculptures and artefacts for analysing their iconographic features and ensembles. Successful application of pattern recognition techniques in the field of iconography has recently received significant attention. A study has been made on the application of various pattern recognition techniques on the Buddhist iconography such as recognition of Thai Buddhist sculptures, Buddhist amulets, Thangka image retrieval, reconstruction of the statues by image analysis, hand gesture recognition etc. This paper provides a critical analysis of the research that have been carried out in the field of Buddhist Iconography as well the various techniques applied. The motivation for writing this paper is to report the review of the existing literature, analysis, the challenges in applications and solution in the subsequent research.