A Portable High Resolution Imaging System for Digitizing Large-Surface Paintings

Digitizing large-surface paintings at a high resolution in museums is necessary in the field of painting conservation to document the actual condition of paintings (e.g. colour measurements) and for analysis (e.g. to analyse underdrawings in high-resolution infrared images). Hence, this paper presents a portable system that is able to scan large-surface paintings or images to provide high-resolution digital images. Additional a 3D-model of the surface of the scanned object is generated. The purpose of the 3D-model is to use the 3D-information to create a planar representation of a once planar painting or image that was deformed through environmental effects. Otherwise uncorrected images lead to blurring in the overlap region of the blended subimages. The resolution of the final image is up to 33 pixel/mm and the size of the scanned object is up to 1.5 m x 1.3 m.