Unveiling the invisible - mathematical methods for restoring and interpreting illuminated manuscripts
This work addresses the need for digital restoration in the arts, particularly for illuminated manuscripts, which have been overlooked compared to other fields like photography and biomedical imaging.
The paper tackles the problem of applying mathematical image processing methods to the arts, specifically for restoring and visualizing illuminated manuscripts, by discussing a range of techniques that offer a generic and objective toolkit for this domain.
The last fifty years have seen an impressive development of mathematical methods for the analysis and processing of digital images, mostly in the context of photography, biomedical imaging and various forms of engineering. The arts have been mostly overlooked in this process, apart from a few exceptional works in the last ten years. With the rapid emergence of digitisation in the arts, however, the arts domain is becoming increasingly receptive to digital image processing methods and the importance of paying attention to this therefore increases. In this paper we discuss a range of mathematical methods for digital image restoration and digital visualisation for illuminated manuscripts. The latter provide an interesting opportunity for digital manipulation because they traditionally remain physically untouched. At the same time they also serve as an example for the possibilities mathematics and digital restoration offer as a generic and objective toolkit for the arts.