X-ray computed tomography applied to investigate ancient manuscripts

I will describe in this paper the first results of a series of X-ray tomography applications, with different system setups, running on some ancient manuscripts containing iron-gall ink. The purpose is to verify the optimum measurement conditions with a laboratory instrumentation -that is also in fact portable- in order to recognize the text from the inside of the documents, without opening them. This becomes possible by exploiting the X-rays absorption contrast of iron-based ink and the three-dimensional reconstruction potential provided by computed tomography that overcomes problems that appear in simple radiograph practice. This work is part of a larger project of EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland), the "Venice Time Machine" project (EPEL, Digital Heritage Venice, http://dhvenice.eu/, 2015) aimed at digitizing, transcribing and sharing in an open database all the information of the State Archives of Venice, exploiting traditional digitization technologies and innovative methods of acquisition. In this first measurement campaign I investigated a manuscript of the seventeenth century made of a folded sheet; a couple of unopened ancient wills kept in the State Archives in Venice and a handwritten book of several hundred pages of notes of Physics of the nineteenth century.