Assessment of two fast multispectral systems for imaging of a cultural heritage artifact- a Russian icon

Abstract

As a part of the study of spectral object documentation in cultural heritage, performances of different spectral imaging systems from various institutions and research laboratories were assessed in a Round Robin Test. This paper presents results from our two fast multispectral imaging systems and compared their performances with reference measurements both spectrally and colorimetrically. Among various test objects used in the test, an antique Russian icon is used as a case study here, as imaging of this object possessed different challenges caused by its glossy painted and metallic gold areas with wide range of tones and colors. The results have shown that these systems can be simpler and cheaper alternatives with comparable results to complicated and highly costly hyperspectral imaging systems which are so far mainly used in the digitization of cultural heritage artifacts.