Communications of the ACM
Imaging System Captures Text From Barely Open Books
Since 2009, the Lazarus Project has recovered damaged cultural heritage objects like manuscripts, but also maps, paintings, and other ancient artifacts.
Credit: J. Adam Fenster/University of Rochester
A new imaging methodology developed by the University of Rochester's Gregory Heyworth and colleagues can capture text from extremely fragile books.
The technique can generate digital images of manuscripts and rare, frail tomes without opening them more than 30 degrees.
Heyworth and researchers in Rochester's text-retrieval Lazarus Project initiative built a system with a view camera featuring a twistable section, which photographs a book held open by a protective cradle.
Software corrects the resulting image's distortion, enabling a page to be read as if the book were lying flat.
The system also captures multiple wavelengths of light, picking up features invisible to the eye while correcting the aged pages' coloration.
From University of Rochester
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Abstracts Copyright © 2021 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
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