3-D reconstruction of historical documents using an X-Ray C-Arm CT system

There exist historical documents that can not be inspected without damaging them. We present a non-invasive method for the reconstruction of historical documents which have been written with iron gall ink. Iron gall ink has been used since the 5th century and is still in use as an indelible ink for writings and drawings. The fact, that this kind of ink is based on metallic particles leads to the assumption that modern X-Ray scanners could image the writings such that it can be differentiated from the paper mainly consisting of cellulose. Our work shows a method that is capable of imaging writings written with iron gall ink by using a modern X-Ray imaging system that is commonly used for medical applications. Even though the imaging system is not optimized for the given task, the writing can be identified. Furthermore, we present a method that is able to reconstruct the volume even if the phantom is not centered properly or misaligned. Applying this method makes it possible to image books, writings or drawings based on all metal-containing inks without page-turning or unrolling the paper.

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