Multispectral Imaging

Non-contact analysis of drawings, archival materials and documents

If a document is scanned perfectly, the digital copy is captured true to the original down to the last corner. There are no poorly lit areas, no blurring, no discoloration. The book2net products stand for precisely this quality. The book2net multispectral system goes one step further: it delves into the depths of the original, making visible what cannot be seen with the naked eye.

In addition to creating a high-quality digital image, this scanning system analyzes structures and material. By using infrared or UV light, areas can be made visible that would remain hidden without this technology. Depending on what exactly you want to make visible, different wavebands are set.

For example, watermarks and paper structures can be highlighted, or the material used to write a text, draw a sketch or paint a work of art can be analyzed. Even foxing stains, ageing processes of the paper or old restorations can be made visible quickly and easily thanks to the sophisticated technology of the book2net multispectral system.

The system not only fulfills the task of making cultural heritage limitlessly available to future generations through digitization but is also a stroke of luck for research. With little effort, a variety of “layers” of the original can be made visible at an enormous speed.

The easy-to-use software leaves nothing to be desired and should please every user. It is easy to create several digital images of the same original with different capturing scenarios in order to make different aspects visible at the same time: While, for example, one image highlights the watermark, another displays restored parts of the paper and a third shows all areas where, for example, carbonized material has been used for writing or drawing. The software allows these images to be superimposed with pixel precision, added or subtracted as it were, in order to carry out specific scientific investigations.

In addition to the material analysis itself, a particular highlight is that no filter change is necessary, as the camera works without any filters at all! This avoids any physical intervention in the device, so there are no vibrations that could impair the quality of the scan result. Everything runs smoothly, quickly and easily via the software.

Renowned institutions such as the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are already using the book2net multispectral system to scientifically examine their art treasures, e.g. the drawings by Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Lucas Cranach and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In this way, valuable works of art are secured for the future on the one hand, and new insights into their condition, necessary restoration measures, creation processes, authorship and authenticity are gained on the other.

All of this makes the multispectral system interesting not only as a cultural science tool for museums, archives and libraries, but also as a testing instrument for other areas of application, such as legal and forensic.