Speaker
Description
The demand from owners and institutions for radiographic imaging of artworks has been steadily increasing in both volume and complexity over time and substantially continues to grow. At the same time, available technology, such as CT systems and components, with a particular focus on data processing, are also rapidly evolving.
A comparison with other European groups revealed that the average standard of CT laboratories is quite high. The level of hardware and software integration, scanning accuracy, software development, and the number of high-end components (such as nanofocus X-ray tubes and high-resolution detectors), as well as the number of employees, is generally very good. This implies a considerable effort on our side to remain up to date.
Thanks to funding from the PNRR and fruitful collaborations, the CHNET node in Bologna has had the opportunity to partially renew its hardware and explore new fields such as photon-counting detectors, although not without facing new challenges.
The development of a new XY translation stage and the integration of a new high-resolution detector into our medium-size CT system have made the need for a data processing station urgent. The increased detector size and resolution generate very large dataset from a single scan and, when combined with translation to perform a tile-scanning CT, this leads to severe data-handling overload. Although residual PNRR funds should still be available and suitable to purchase a data-processing workstation, this need has not yet been met.
Mobile systems have been and continue to be our flagship; however, they also present significant operational and management challenges. Their use requires significant commitment from operators, and the number of campaigns that can be carried out each year is limited. Moreover, the risk of component failure, system misalignment as well as issues during the scanning process is not negligible, making mobile systems subject to a certain percentage of failures.
Nevertheless, over the past year we have carried out a significant number of analyses both on site and in our labs, and we present here a short overview upon them.
Along with intensive routine activity both in the laboratory and in situ, working on new standard and cutting-edge systems is certainly challenging. The collaboration with colleagues in high-energy physics on a project to develop a tomographic system based on a photon counting detector is about to conclude and, although this approach is theoretically very promising, substantial work remains to be done.
In light of all these considerations, we aim to define what our place is - or could be - within the broader landscape of cultural heritage analysis and what our contribution is or could be in view of the new evidence gathered this year.