Brazil's Christ the Redeemer has been scanned into a fully accurate 3D model for the first time after a drone flew around and snapped 3,584 pictures of the iconic statue.

The Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) of Rio de Janeiro, Canadian drone manufacturer Aeryon Labs and Swiss software company Pix4D teamed up to create a high resolution 3D model of the art deco statue of Jesus Christ, which measure 38 metres tall on its pedestal.

In the past it has been impossible to accurately scan a 3D model of the statue, due to it's awkward location at the top of the 700-metre Corcovado mountain that overlooks the city of Rio. But thanks to the manoeuvrability of the quadcopter, which was flown 19 times around the statue over six days, the 3,584 images collected were then scanned and processed to create the first ever accurate 3D model.

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