Reflectance Transformation Imaging and ImageJ: Comparing Imaging Methodologies for Cultural Heritage Artefacts

The imaging of cultural heritage sites and artefacts is now a highly technical process with many tools and methodological approaches available to archaeologists, architects, museum curators and artefact conservators. Imaging studies at the Australian Institute of Archaeology (AIA) have been directed principally to the recording of the artefacts within the collection. Several imaging tools have been used, including optical microscopy, pseudo 3D photography using a translation rig, flatbed scanning and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). RTI is an important tool for the on-going Cuneiform in Australian and New Zealand collections (CANZ) project, one output of which will be a web-site from which researchers will be able to load the interactive RTI files that can be viewed using Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI) algorithmic rendering tools. Where publication of the AIA artefacts through journal articles and monographs is to be undertaken, other imaging techniques are being investigated to capture or enhance detail in a single image. In this work, we compare the outputs of RTI and ImageJ for interactive imaging and for singleimage publishing. This paper presents the results of applying ImageJ processing tools to images taken using the RTI methodology. Two types of artefact were studied in this work: (i) a clay tablet with significant relief in the incised cuneiform text and with convex surfaces and (ii) a papyrus fragment with ink script and a relatively flat surface texture. Both artefacts were imaged using the RTI illuminating dome methodology and the reflectance functions developed for algorithmic rendering. Image data for both artefacts were also processed using ImageJ enhancement tools, specifically Z-Project. The resultant images are compared with those from RTI algorithmic rendering.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

David Saunders

Richard Collmann

Ann Borda

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 350-357

Affiliations

[0001]Australian Institute of Archaeology

La Trobe University

VIC. Australia 3086

[0002]Dept. of Physics

University of Melbourne & eAustralis Pty. Ltd

VIC. Australia 3010

[0003]Health and Biomedical Informatics Centre

Melbourne Medical School

University of Melbourne

VIC Australia 3010

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2017.71

SO-VID: 6fd60be8-9284-4a02-9ef2-f214591ac26b

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2017)

Conference acronym: EVA

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 11 – 13 July 2017

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2017.71

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

7. REFERENCES

M. AbramoffP. MagalhaesS. Ram 2004 Imaging Processing with ImageJ Biophotonics Int. 11 36 42
D. Arnold 2008 Digital Artefacts: Possibilities and Purpose M. GreengrassL. Hughes The Virtual Representation ofthe Past. Ashgate Publishing Surrey, England 159 170
W. Christens-Barry 2012 ImageJ Toolbox for Working with Cultural Heritage Materials Presentation at the ImageJ User Development Conference, Luxembourg.
Cultural Heritage Imaging 2011 Reflectance Transformation Imaging: Guide to Highlight Image Processing v1.4 Publ. Cultural Heritage Imaging. http://CulturalHeritageImaging.org
Cultural Heritage Imaging 2013 Reflectance Transformation Imaging, Guide to RTIViewer V 1.1 Publ. Cultural Heritage Imaging and Visual Computing Lab, ISTI - Italian National Research Council. http://CulturalHeritageImaging.org
C. DaveyG. HorsleyB. Ioset 2015 Dionysia or Dionysias at Kourion, Cyprus. Buried History 51 17 18
T. FerreiraW. Rasband 2012 ImageJ User Guide, IJ1.46r National Institutes of Health. https://imagei.nih.gov/ii/
A. FreemanM DoutreG. BevanA. Murray 2013 Craquelure Documentation and Analysis: a Preliminary Process Using Reflectance Transformation Imaging and ImageJ ANAGPIC 2013, 13 pages.
P. GautronJ. KrivanekS. PattanaikK. Bouatouch 2004 A Novel Hemispherical Basis for Accurate and Efficient Rendering: in Rendering Techniques 2004 Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 321 330
E. FigueiredoR. SilvaF. AraujoF. Fernandes 2013 Multifocus Optical Microscopy Applied to the Study of Archaeological Metals. Microscopy and Analysis 19 5 1248 1254
J-L. Le QuellecF. DuquesnoyC. Defrasne 2015 Digital Image Enhancement with D-Stretch ®; Is Complexity Always Necessary for Efficiency? Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 2 2-3 55 67
T. MalzbenderD. GelbM. Mudge 2001 Polynomial Texture Maps. Proceedings of the 28^th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH’01). ACM 519 528
G. PalmaM. CorsiniP. CignoniR. ScopignoM. Mudge 2010 Dynamic Shading Enhancement for Reflectance Transformation Imaging. ACM J. Computing and Cultural Heritage 3 2 Article 6 20
E. Payne 2013 Imaging Techniques in Conservation Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 10 2 2012 17 29
D. SaundersR. CollmannL. Siddall 2016 Reflectance Transformation Imaging and the Cuneiform in Australian and New Zealand Collections Project. Buried History 52 45 48
C SchneiderW. RasbandK. Eliceiri 2012 NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nature Forum 9 7 671 675
O. WangP. GunawardneS. ScherJ. Davis 2009 Material Classification using BRDF slices; IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern recognition (CVPR09) 7
D. J. Wiseman 1953 The Nimrud Tablets, 1953, Iraq 15 153 160

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] M. AbramoffP. MagalhaesS. Ram 2004 Imaging Processing with ImageJ Biophotonics Int. 11 36 42

[2] D. Arnold 2008 Digital Artefacts: Possibilities and Purpose M. GreengrassL. Hughes The Virtual Representation ofthe Past. Ashgate Publishing Surrey, England 159 170

[3] W. Christens-Barry 2012 ImageJ Toolbox for Working with Cultural Heritage Materials Presentation at the ImageJ User Development Conference, Luxembourg.

[4] Cultural Heritage Imaging 2011 Reflectance Transformation Imaging: Guide to Highlight Image Processing v1.4 Publ. Cultural Heritage Imaging. http://CulturalHeritageImaging.org

[5] Cultural Heritage Imaging 2013 Reflectance Transformation Imaging, Guide to RTIViewer V 1.1 Publ. Cultural Heritage Imaging and Visual Computing Lab, ISTI - Italian National Research Council. http://CulturalHeritageImaging.org

[6] C. DaveyG. HorsleyB. Ioset 2015 Dionysia or Dionysias at Kourion, Cyprus. Buried History 51 17 18

[7] T. FerreiraW. Rasband 2012 ImageJ User Guide, IJ1.46r National Institutes of Health. https://imagei.nih.gov/ii/

[8] A. FreemanM DoutreG. BevanA. Murray 2013 Craquelure Documentation and Analysis: a Preliminary Process Using Reflectance Transformation Imaging and ImageJ ANAGPIC 2013, 13 pages.

[9] P. GautronJ. KrivanekS. PattanaikK. Bouatouch 2004 A Novel Hemispherical Basis for Accurate and Efficient Rendering: in Rendering Techniques 2004 Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 321 330

[10] E. FigueiredoR. SilvaF. AraujoF. Fernandes 2013 Multifocus Optical Microscopy Applied to the Study of Archaeological Metals. Microscopy and Analysis 19 5 1248 1254

[11] J-L. Le QuellecF. DuquesnoyC. Defrasne 2015 Digital Image Enhancement with D-Stretch ®; Is Complexity Always Necessary for Efficiency? Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 2 2-3 55 67

[12] T. MalzbenderD. GelbM. Mudge 2001 Polynomial Texture Maps. Proceedings of the 28^th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH’01). ACM 519 528

[13] G. PalmaM. CorsiniP. CignoniR. ScopignoM. Mudge 2010 Dynamic Shading Enhancement for Reflectance Transformation Imaging. ACM J. Computing and Cultural Heritage 3 2 Article 6 20

[14] E. Payne 2013 Imaging Techniques in Conservation Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 10 2 2012 17 29

[15] D. SaundersR. CollmannL. Siddall 2016 Reflectance Transformation Imaging and the Cuneiform in Australian and New Zealand Collections Project. Buried History 52 45 48

[16] C SchneiderW. RasbandK. Eliceiri 2012 NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nature Forum 9 7 671 675

[17] O. WangP. GunawardneS. ScherJ. Davis 2009 Material Classification using BRDF slices; IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern recognition (CVPR09) 7

[18] D. J. Wiseman 1953 The Nimrud Tablets, 1953, Iraq 15 153 160

Studying business & IT? Drive your professional career forwards with BCS books - for a 20% discount click here: shop.bcs.org