ArchaeoTrace
Local-first contour tracing for historical maps with optional AI assistance and experimental DEM reconstruction.
ArchaeoTrace helps users digitize elevation contours from scanned historical maps and review locally generated terrain hypotheses.
Features:
- Ink Centerline default with a bounded 320px direction-aware Live-Wire
- Literal 0-100% cursor/path coordinate blending; green preview shows the path accepted by the next click
- Manual and guided tracing with Freehand, Ink, LSD, HED, and Legacy Canny
- Optional point-prompt tracing with MobileSAM and SAM (ViT-B)
- Elevation attributes and optional spot-height capture
- Experimental linear-TIN DEM and hillshade generation from saved elevation data
- Developer-only reproducible benchmarks; EfficientSAM is not a UI option or default model
External dependencies: default Ink and Freehand use NumPy supplied by QGIS.
SciPy and scikit-image are optional Ink optimizations. LSD, HED, and SAM
require OpenCV; MobileSAM and full SAM additionally require requests,
PyTorch, their pinned backend package, and separately downloaded weights.
Installation commands and platform notes are in the linked homepage README.
QGIS 3.22/Python 3.8 remains a source and no-pip contract target; optional
pip stacks require Python 3.10 or newer. See the release-readiness record
for the exact locally executed and configured-but-not-run QGIS matrix.
Processing is local-first and map data is not sent to a remote inference service.
Model downloads and missing-model source checks are user-initiated network actions.
Terrain outputs are reviewable hypotheses rather than archaeological ground truth.