Pattern Recognition Lab, Computer Science, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, 91058, Germany.
Institute of Image Processing and Pattern Recognition, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, P.R. China.
Sci Rep. 2019 Feb 19;9(1):2311. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39447-0.
In ancient China, symbols and drawings captured on bamboo and wooden slips were used as main communication media. Those documents are very precious for cultural heritage and research, but due to aging processes, the discovered pieces are sometimes in a poor condition and contaminated by soil. Manual cleaning of excavated slips is a demanding and time-consuming task in which writings can be accidentally deleted. To counter this, we propose a novel approach based on conventional 3-D X-ray computed tomography to digitize such historical documents without before manual cleaning. By applying a virtual cleaning and unwrapping algorithm, the entire scroll surface is remapped into 2-D such that the hidden content becomes readable. We show that the technique also works for heavily soiled scrolls, enabling an investigation of the content by the naked eye without the need for manual labor. This digitization also allows for recovery of potentially erased writings and reconstruction of the original spatial information.
在中国古代，竹简和木牍上的符号和绘画被用作主要的交流媒介。这些文献对于文化遗产和研究非常珍贵，但由于年代久远，发现的文物有时状况不佳，并且受到土壤的污染。对出土的竹简进行手动清理是一项要求很高且耗时的任务，在清理过程中，文字可能会意外删除。针对这一问题，我们提出了一种新的方法，基于常规的三维 X 射线计算机断层扫描，在不进行手动清理的情况下对这些历史文献进行数字化处理。通过应用虚拟清理和解包算法，将整个卷轴表面重新映射到二维，从而使隐藏的内容变得可读。我们表明，该技术也适用于严重污染的卷轴，使人们无需人工劳动即可用肉眼调查内容。这种数字化处理还可以恢复可能被擦除的文字，并重建原始的空间信息。
