Article: Nephele System for Artwork Restoration (2008)

Title: The Material Description and Classification in Nephele System for Artwork Restoration
Author: Miroslav Beneš, Barbara Zitová, J. Hradilová, David Hradil
Reference: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia , M. Ioannides, A. Addison, A. Georgopoulos, L. Kalisperis (eds.), VSMM International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, Limassol, CY, 2008
DOI: 20.10.2008-25.10.2008
Link: http://utia.cas.cz/... (pdf, 298 Kb)

Abstract:

We present a comprehensive information system for processing and archiving material analyses data produced during art restoration process - Nephele. The Nephele is a database system extended with image analyzing modules - image registration, segmentation, and object description and classification - designed for archiving and working with material analyses reports. The aim of the material analyses of paintings is to identify inorganic and organic compounds using microanalytical methods, and to describe painting layers and their morphology. Archiving all these data, Nephele can act as a knowledge base and an expert system for future advanced analyses. Image-type data of the archived reports are pre-processed, analyzed, and described for further evaluation. Moreover, next to the classical text-query database search Nephele supports report retrieval based on the similarity of the sample image to the archived image data, which can notably facilitate selection of relevant records to the current restoration case. In the near future, the Nephele system will be extended by the module for automatic painting material classification, based on neural network architecture and newly designed material taxonomy using object descriptors, capturing the layers morphology, their homogeneity or heterogeneity, and their color properties.