In his above-mentioned email, Phelps explained that Easton “processes the captured images of the Martellus map in order to generate a series of derivative, processed images which maximize the legibility of text and other information on the map. Roger builds an ‘image cube,’ in a sense a stack of the captured images, and then uses statistical methods to analyze the collected data and to distinguish features of the map. Some of these features, such as faded writing, may be illegible to (the) naked eye, but can be isolated statistically and then rendered legible in processed images. A feedback loop between Roger Easton, project scientist, and Chet Van Duzer, project scientist, improves the processed result and insures that we maximize the legibility of faded and obscured text on the map.”
Heyworth pointed out that capturing the images is only 15 percent or 20 percent of the process. The majority of a multispectral imaging project involves the image processing and the task of reading and understanding what’s revealed.
“Multispectral imaging is an esoteric science,” Heyworth said, explaining that “we do textural science,” and that “the technology … is in its inception.”
The goal, he said, is “to reveal writing that is not visible … and also to create a highly color accurate … digital reproduction of the object,” a reproduction that reaches back in time. He likened the process to looking at stars. Through the multispectral imaging process, one “looks into the earliest history of the object,” he said. And through that technology, he said, “we’re changing the canon.”
The Martellus map multispectral imaging project at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a collaboration between the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, which oversaw the imaging process, and the Lazarus Project, which provided the equipment. The imaging team included independent scholar Chet Van Duzer, who led the project; Gregory Heyworth, a professor of medieval studies at the University of Mississippi and the director of the Lazarus project, who conducted the imaging; Michael Phelps, the director of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, who served as the project manager; Roger Easton, a professor of imaging science at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the imaging team’s project scientist; and Kenneth Boydston, CEO of the digital imaging company MegaVision, who designed the camera used in the imaging process and helped to capture images of the Martellus map.
Learn more about the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library at emelibrary.org. Learn more about the Lazarus Project at lazarusprojectimaging.com. And visit the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library online at beinecke.library.yale.edu.
This article appears in the October issue of The Arts Paper. Read other stories from this issue online here.