A tool for the construction of synthetic petroglyphs

Archaeologists are often tasked with the identification and extractions of glyphs and petroglyphs from surfaces. Since this task is usually performed by hand, it is time consuming and prone to human errors. Therefore, in the years several automatic techniques have been developed to solve this problem. However, to the best of our knowledge, a tool for the creation of realistic synthetic data has not be developed and distributed yet. It is the purpose of this paper to fill this gap. We construct a Matlab tool with a graphic user interface to create three-dimensional realistic surfaces where petroglyphs have been carved. The user can select the shape, position, and depths of these petroglyphs. This tool can be used to validate extraction algorithms and to create training data for supervised learning techniques.