Towards the Definition of a Low-Cost Toolbox for Qualitative Inspection of Painted Historical Vaults by Means of Modified DSLR Cameras, Open Source Programs and Signal Processing Techniques | SpringerLink
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Towards the Definition of a Low-Cost Toolbox for Qualitative Inspection of Painted Historical Vaults by Means of Modified DSLR Cameras, Open Source Programs and Signal Processing Techniques

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Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2020 (ICCSA 2020)

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Abstract

Historical architecture is a primary element containing the identity values of a society. The wide diffusion of many ancient buildings gathering part of these values on painting walls over territories often characterized by poor technological or economic resources brings to consider the development of low-cost protocols to inspect valued surfaces and to give the authorities in charge of preservation and restoration adequate technical information. Here we present the preliminary results of a recent application of remote sensing micro-geophysical techniques to typical architectural targets such as vaults. A modified commercial Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera was used to acquire multispectral datasets on portions of a painted vault. Multispectral datasets were used raw or after the application of a pre-processing step with a Multi Images Stacking (MIS) algorithm. Multispectral images were then processed with spatial wavelet decomposition, histogram enhancing, thresholds application, image fusion, false colors compositing and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) techniques. Software used have been GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) and Mathworks MATLAB (which can be substituted for the processing steps proposed by the built-in functions of GNU OCTAVE open-source software). Processed images were able to highlight features on vault paintings revealing details of the surface or its very shallow layers which were impossible or very difficult to distinguish in raw data. In fact, they emphasized low-visible details, differences in apparently similar finishes or pigments, cracks and probably details of surface preparation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the essential help of L. Noli and M. Sitzia during data acquisition and instrumental setup. They also would like to thank F. Mura for the photo of Fig. 7.a. Finally, a special thanks to prof. D.R. Fiorino and the local prefecture for permitting the access to the San Giuseppe monumental structure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering and Architecture, DICAAR-UniCA, Cagliari, Italy

    Luca Piroddi, Sergio Vincenzo Calcina, Antonio Trogu & Giulio Vignoli

  2. Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland GEUS, Aarhus, Denmark

    Giulio Vignoli

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  1. Luca Piroddi
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  2. Sergio Vincenzo Calcina
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  3. Antonio Trogu
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  4. Giulio Vignoli
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Correspondence to Luca Piroddi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

    Osvaldo Gervasi

  2. University of Basilicata, Potenza, Potenza, Italy

    Beniamino Murgante

  3. Chair- Center of ICT/ICE, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Sanjay Misra

  4. University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Chiara Garau

  5. University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Ivan Blečić

  6. Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    David Taniar

  7. Department of Information Science, Kyushu Sangyo University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Bernady O. Apduhan

  8. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Ana Maria A. C. Rocha

  9. Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Eufemia Tarantino

  10. Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Maria Torre

  11. Department of Neurology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Yeliz Karaca

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Piroddi, L., Calcina, S.V., Trogu, A., Vignoli, G. (2020). Towards the Definition of a Low-Cost Toolbox for Qualitative Inspection of Painted Historical Vaults by Means of Modified DSLR Cameras, Open Source Programs and Signal Processing Techniques. In: Gervasi, O., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2020. ICCSA 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12255. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58820-5_70

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58820-5_70

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