Evaluation of historical maps by affine transformation of region boundaries

A novel method that evaluates entire regions of historical maps is presented. Because historical maps were usually drawn by aggregating disparately produced or collected regional information, it is difficult to compare entire regions from historical maps with modern maps. To enable regional comparisons of historical and new maps, we transform target regions using points that correspond with a reference region, where the corresponding points are located at region boundaries. Thus, the two regions can be easily compared because they overlap at corresponding points. This method was applied to historical maps of the Korean Peninsula, and experimental results show the transformed historical maps to be similar to the modern maps. The proposed method can be used to analyze entire regions of historical maps and allows for the proper evaluation of historical maps by era.