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Ancient administrative handwritten documents: X-ray analysis and imaging.

  • Albertin F Faculté des Sciences de Base, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Astolfo A Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Villigen, Switzerland.
  • Stampanoni M Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Villigen, Switzerland.
  • Peccenini E Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, University of Ferrara, Italy.
  • Hwu Y Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
  • Kaplan F Laboratoire d'Humanités Digitales, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.
  • Margaritondo G Faculté des Sciences de Base, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
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  • 2015-02-28
Published in:
  • Journal of synchrotron radiation. - 2015
X-ray fluorescence
ancient inks
ancient manuscripts
cultural heritage
differential phase contrast
phase contrast
refractive index imaging
Documentation
History, Ancient
Humans
Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted
Imaging, Three-Dimensional
Ink
Italy
Manuscripts as Topic
Refractometry
Writing
English Handwritten characters in administrative antique documents from three centuries have been detected using different synchrotron X-ray imaging techniques. Heavy elements in ancient inks, present even for everyday administrative manuscripts as shown by X-ray fluorescence spectra, produce attenuation contrast. In most cases the image quality is good enough for tomography reconstruction in view of future applications to virtual page-by-page `reading'. When attenuation is too low, differential phase contrast imaging can reveal the characters from refractive index effects. The results are potentially important for new information harvesting strategies, for example from the huge Archivio di Stato collection, objective of the Venice Time Machine project.
Language
  • English
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/791
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