A method for monitoring the surface conservation of wooden objects by Raman spectroscopy and multivariate control charts.

The principles of quality control and multivariate statistical analysis were applied to the monitoring of the conservation state of wooden works of art. Three degradation processes (exposure to a wet atmosphere, to an acidic attack, and to UV light) were simulated on the surface of wooden boards of the XVI century and were monitored by the use of Raman spectroscopy. The resulting spectra were treated by principal component analysis, which allowed reduction of the system dimensionality. The relevant principal components were used to build multivariate control charts, namely, the Shewhart, CUSUM, and SMART (simultaneous scores monitoring and residual tracking) control charts. The Shewhart charts allowed identification of the effects due to the degradation processes. The CUSUM charts permitted identifcation of the exact moment in which the degradation treatment was started. The SMART charts provided a synthetic description of the conservation state of the wooden surface by means of only two charts: the T2 Hotelling and the DModX charts.