Bio:
Paul L. Rosin is a Professor at the School of Computer Science & Informatics, Cardiff University. He has worked on many aspects of computer vision over the last 40 years, covering both fundamental algorithms in areas such as low level image processing, performance evaluation, shape analysis, facial analysis, medical image analysis, surveillance, 3D mesh processing, cellular automata and non-photorealistic rendering, as well as multidisciplinary collaborations such as: determining the effectiveness of surgery from facial morphology and temporal dynamics, the perception of trustworthiness from smiles, segmentation of 3D OCT scans of retinas, interpreting lava flows, identification of desmids and otoliths, analysing the effects of alcohol on crowd dynamics and violence, and digitally unrolling of fragile parchments from 3D X-ray scans.
Abstract:
Historical parchment scrolls are fragile, and consequently many such scrolls cannot be unrolled, so that their contents have remained hidden for centuries. I will describe several stages in the development of our method to perform a "virtual unrolling" of such documents from their X-ray tomographic scans. A critical element is the segmentation of the images in order to separate the parchment from the background, which is complicated by both holes in the parchment and the fusing of adjacent rolled layers. Since this causes standard segmentation algorithms to produce errors, we have devised several new algorithms to cope with such data. Once segmentation is achieved, the parchment is virtually flattened, and the ink density recovered to produce a reconstruction of the parchment surface. An example of our results are shown on the previously unseen fifteenth century Bressingham scroll.