Multispectral Imaging (MSI) with R.B. Toth Associates
For two decades, R.B. Toth Associates LLC has led and managed digital and advanced imaging studies of cultural heritage objects around the globe. They provide the planning, management, imaging and post-processing tools needed for advanced digitization and analysis.
What it does
R.B.Toth's 4th-Generation modular multispectral imaging systems, with 100-150 Megapixel CMOS cameras, advanced illumination panels and integrated operational and post-processing software, are capable of revealing text and drawings unseen by the human eye. They capture images from specific narrow spectral bands of light reflected from an object. Their systems use mature LED illumination first developed by Dr. Bill Christens-Barry of Equipoise Imaging for the Archimedes Palimpsest Project. The resulting images are combined with the Equipoise Imaging Paleo Toolbar, available to support digital image processing for all disciplines -- from paleography to preservation.
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Seeing the Unseen
A Georgian palimpsest (Garrett MS. 24)
Originally developed and used by NASA, multispectral imaging measures light in a small number (3-15) of spectral bands in an effort to see the things we may not be able to see with the naked eye. The pages of Garrett 24 (below) are an excellent example of what scholars call a palimpsest - a manuscript page or pages "from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document." Thanks to advanced processing of the image stacks, we are able to see the underwriting more vividly than before.
The pages of Garrett MS 24 record a multilingual, mobile, wealthy Christian community come upon hard times, but this story is not found in the text. The text gives us a Georgian translation of Inventio crucis, a story of the discovery of the cross first written by Alexander of Cyprus in the 500s. The scribe of this much later Georgian translation signed the manuscript with a colophon: “When this book was written, completed, and bound by the great sinner John of the Holy [Monastery of] Sinai, it was the year of creation in Georgian 6590, the Kronikon was 206, the year of the Greeks was 6519 and the Kronikon 94, the indiction 14.” This colophon, lost since the manuscript’s (precarious) re-entry into documented history in 1883, tells us we are looking at work completed by a Georgian scribe, John Zosimos, in 986 CE. ~ excerpt from Marginalization in Medieval Manuscripts
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Faded Imagery in Incipit prolog in elucidario... [manuscript with dual illumination of magister cum discipulis and of scribe at desk
A manuscript fragment, comprising the complete text of the Elucidarium. The upper leaf bearing the illumination is soiled and faded, but still legible. Thom Kren of the manuscript department at the Getty center says the image might be enhanced electronically in PhotoShop, or mechanically through the use of special lights or filters to bring up detail. We have gone a step further by selecting this item for Multispectral Imaging.