Abstract:
“Can modern imaging and image processing techniques retrieve textual content from damaged parchment rolls?” The Institute of Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London is the leading centre for very high contrast X-Ray Microtomogra- phy imaging. The Apocalypto (Greek for Revelation) Project is our collaboration with experts in Computer Vision systems in the Com- puter Science department at Cardiff University. This collaboration has developed techniques and a workflow that allows us to reveal some textual content from damaged parchment rolls. In initial results we have produced a virtual unrolling of the full length of the left-hand third of a fused parchment roll, amounting to in excess of 50 lines of text—a five-fold increase over that accessable by traditional means. We expect more complete unrolling as data processing techniques improve. We think this article will conclusively show that we can apply our techniques to heritage objects and produce information of value to the conservation and archivist communities.