Dataset Information

Virtual Recovery of Content from X-Ray Micro-Tomography Scans of Damaged Historic Scrolls.

ABSTRACT: There is a large body of historical documents that are too fragile to be opened or unrolled, making their contents inaccessible. Recent improvements in X-ray scanning technology and computer vision techniques make it possible to perform a "virtual" unrolling of such documents. We describe a novel technique to process a stack of 3D X-ray images to identify the surface of parchment scrolls, unroll them, and create a visualization of their written contents. Unlike existing techniques, we can handle even challenging cases with minimal manual interaction. Our novel approach was deployed on two 15th and 16th century damaged historic scrolls from the manors of Bressingham and Diss Heywood. The former has become fused, probably due to exposure to moisture, and cannot be fully unrolled. The latter was severely burnt several hundred years ago, becoming thoroughly charred, heat-shrunken, and distorted, with all the sheets now brittle and fused together. Our virtual unrolling revealed text that has been hidden for centuries.

SUBMITTER: Rosin PL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6085331 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Virtual Recovery of Content from X-Ray Micro-Tomography Scans of Damaged Historic Scrolls.

Rosin Paul L PL Lai Yu-Kun YK Liu Chang C Davis Graham R GR Mills David D Tuson Gary G Russell Yuki Y

Scientific reports 20180809 1

There is a large body of historical documents that are too fragile to be opened or unrolled, making their contents inaccessible. Recent improvements in X-ray scanning technology and computer vision techniques make it possible to perform a "virtual" unrolling of such documents. We describe a novel technique to process a stack of 3D X-ray images to identify the surface of parchment scrolls, unroll them, and create a visualization of their written contents. Unlike existing techniques, we can handle ...[more]

PMID: 30093680

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Project description:Virtual anthropology (VA) is based on applying anthropological methods currently used to analyse bones to 3D models of human remains. While great advances have been made in this endeavour in the past decade, several interrogations concerning how reliable these models are and what their proper use should be remain unanswered. In this research, a fundamental assumption of VA has been investigated: if the way we perceive and apply an anthropological method is truly similar when looking at bones macroscopically and through various 3D media. In order to answer, 10 skulls of known age and sex were scanned using a computed tomography (CT) scanner and a 3D surface scanner. Two observers separately applied a defined staging method to eight suture sites on these skulls, first looking at the bone macroscopically, then at the 3D surface scan, and finally on the CT scan. Two rounds of observation were carried out by each observer. Intra- and inter-observer error were evaluated, and two sample t-tests used to evaluate if the different types of medium used yielded significantly different observations. The results show a high degree of inter-observer error, and that data obtained from 3D surface scans differ from macroscopic observation (confidence level 95%, P ≤ 0.05). CT scans, in these settings, yielded results comparable to those obtained through macroscopic observations. These results offer many possibilities for future research, including indications on the kind of anthropological methods and anatomical landmarks that might be reliably transferable to the virtual environment. All current methods used in traditional anthropology should be tested, and if they prove unreliable, new techniques to analyse bones from virtual models should be developed.Key pointsLarge discrepancies between observation on dry bones and computer-generated 3D models (surface scans or CT scans) could lead to the re-evaluation of the suitability of traditional anthropological methods for application on 3D models.This preliminary study evaluates whether macroscopic, 3D surface scans, and CT scans viewings generate different observations.The results indicate that the data are not always coherent across all three media of observation.Explanations include the aspect given to the bone by the 3D software, differences between handling bones in real life versus on a computer, and level of expertise of the observers.

Project description:This work concerns computed tomography (CT)-based cardiac functional analysis (CFA) with a reduced radiation dose. As CT-CFA requires images over the entire heartbeat, the scans are often performed at 10-20% of the tube current settings that are typically used for coronary CT angiography. A large image noise then degrades the accuracy of motion estimation. Moreover, even if the scan was performed during the sinus rhythm, the cardiac motion observed in CT images may not be cyclic with patients with atrial fibrillation. In this study, we propose to use two CT scan data, one for CT angiography at a quiescent phase at a standard dose and the other for CFA over the entire heart beat at a lower dose.We have made the following four modifications to an image-based cardiac motion estimation method we have previously developed for a full-dose retrospectively gated coronary CT angiography: (a) a full-dose prospectively gated coronary CT angiography image acquired at the least motion phase was used as the reference image; (b) a three-dimensional median filter was applied to lower-dose retrospectively gated cardiac images acquired at 20 phases over one heartbeat in order to reduce image noise; (c) the strength of the temporal regularization term was made adaptive; and (d) a one-dimensional temporal filter was applied to the estimated motion vector field in order to decrease jaggy motion patterns. We describe the conventional method iME1 and the proposed method iME2 in this article. Five observers assessed the accuracy of the estimated motion vector field of iME2 and iME1 using a 4-point scale. The observers repeated the assessment with data presented in a new random order 1 week after the first assessment session.The study confirmed that the proposed iME2 was robust against the mismatch of noise levels, contrast enhancement levels, and shapes of the chambers. There was a statistically significant difference between iME2 and iME1 (accuracy score, 2.08 ± 0.81 versus 2.77 ± 0.98, P < 0.01) and the improvement by the score of + 0.69 seemed clinically relevant. Inter-observer concordance was good: The inter-class correlation coefficient was 0.63 and Kendall's rank correlation coefficients were in the range of 0.41-0.67 (P < 0.01), respectively. Intra-observer reproducibility between sessions was good with the inter-class correlation coefficient of 0.76.We have proposed iME2 method for CT-CFA with two CT scans. The observer study verified the robustness and accuracy of iME2 method and its improved performance over iME1 method.

Dataset Information

Virtual Recovery of Content from X-Ray Micro-Tomography Scans of Damaged Historic Scrolls.

Publications

Virtual Recovery of Content from X-Ray Micro-Tomography Scans of Damaged Historic Scrolls.

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