Researchers: Simone Parisotto, Luca Calatroni, Rob Hocking, and Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

The last 50 years have seen an impressive developement of mathematical methods for the analysis and processing of digital images, mostly for photography and biomedical imaging: the arts have been mostly overlooked in this process, apart from a few exceptional works in the last 10 years. With the rapid emergence of digitisation in the arts, however, the arts domain is becoming increasingly receptive to digital image processing methods and the importance of paying attention to this therefore increases.
In this project, we explore multiple imaging applications to Cultural Heritage conversation challenges. We develop a new multi-modal non-invasive mid-infrared technique for detecting sub-superficial defects in fresco walls; we digitally fure multi-modal data via osmosis filter, unveiling hidden features of artworks; we propose a semi-supervised workflow for the detection and inpainting of defects in damaged illuminated manuscripts form the Fitzwilliam Museum's collection in Cambridge.

This project is part of one of our collaborative projects: MACH: Mathematics for Applications in Cultural Heritage.