Analytical imaging of traditional Japanese paintings using multispectral images

Abstract

In this study, the influence of lighting conditions on the reconstruction of spectral reflectance and image stitching was explored. Pigment estimation using the reconstructed spectral reflectance was also discussed. Spectral reflectance was estimated using pseudoinverse model from multispectral images of a traditional Japanese painting. It was observed that the accuracy of the estimation is greatly influenced by lighting conditions. High specular reflection on the target yielded large amount of estimation errors. On the other hand, it was observed that in addition to specular reflection, the distribution of light highly affects image stitching. Image stitching is important especially when acquiring images of large objects. Finally, pigments used on the painting were estimated using spectral curve matching of the reconstructed spectral reflectance compared to a pigment database. It was shown that multispectral images could be used for the analytical imaging of artworks. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.