SCAN4RECO is a 3-year Research and Innovation Action (2015-2018) where 9 partners from 5 countries collaborate in developing ICT solutions for efficient restoration and prevention of degradation of cultural heritage objects. The need to preserve, provide advanced access to and understanding of cultural heritage is of utmost importance, especially when considering its wealth throughout Europe.

Following the system integration and technical validations of all developed technologies, the SCAN4RECO project has progressed to conducting pilot trials with end users in the Ormylia Foundation laboratories at the end of July 2018.

The functionalities of the Scan4Reco platform were first presented to end-users. These included multi-modal scanning, 3D modelling of the CH object’s structure and appearance, interactive visualization, spatio-temporal simulation, degradation annotation and proposed conservation strategies.

Then users attended presentations of the Scan4Reco system setup. They were able to observe the setup of various sensors, the positioning system of the XYZ stage and the rotational motor as well as a demonstration of their role on the Scan4Reco system.

1. Acquisition module allows users to perform acquisition using a number of sensor and motion devices. For example, in the case of depth sensor acquisition, the user can define the parameters related to depth sensor and rotary stage devices. During acquisition, the recorded depth and color maps are displayed.

2. Acquisition module allows users to select a point on the 3D model of icon on the 3D viewer of the Scan4Reco platform. The intermediate system of the Robotic Operating System (ROS) calculates the optimal motion plan for the mechanical arm to reach the selected point. The motion plan is executed by the Scan4Reco platform and the mechanical arm reaches the selected point on the actual icon.

3. Acquisition module allows the users to perform acquisition using a number of sensor and motion devices. For example, in the case of UVVIS acquisition, the user can define the UVVIS settings, perform calibration and start actual acquisition. After acquisition, the recorded signal is displayed.

4. 3D Modelling module produces a 3D digital replica of the original Cultural Heritage (CH) item using the data acquired by the rgb-depth sensor providing a coarse approximation of the CH item’s surface and appearance. It also supports a higher resolution 3D modelling utilizing the data recorded by the 3D photogrammetry camera. The user may change some parameters, for instance the desired resolution of reconstruction. During alignment, the recorded depth/color maps and the accumulated point clouds are displayed.

5. Ageing Simulation module offers various ageing simulation methods that enable users to investigate the Cultural Heritage object’s appearance and geometry at different time instants. In the particles-based simulation for example, the user can configure the simulation parameters (e.g., u-ton system parameters, the u-ton source initialization) and see the simulation results (e.g., the propagated u-tons (red spheres)).

6. Magnification module offers a functionality of enhancing the insight of Cultural Heritage (CH) 3D objects, by performing non-linear magnification in order to give more space to regions of the objects that are significant, on the expense of reducing the space available to less significant regions. The developed GUI allows the user to change the magnification parameters, for instance the desired magnification scale. Once magnification process is finished, the actual 3D model of the CH item and the 3D model after magnification can be displayed by clicking the corresponding radio buttons.

7. Rendering module renders the resulted 3D model to the user and gives him the ability to visualize the effect of different texture maps to the model’s appearance, as well as inspect inner layers of the model if they exist. Also it exports the model to a specific format ready for 3D printing.

8. Diagnosis module offers the visualization of the recorded data (e.g., an IR image), the execution of automatic diagnosis algorithms (e.g., for defects detection on an IR image) and the manual annotation of degradations.

9. Text Synthesis module provides a comprehensive text with conservation strategies based on sets of annotated degradations occurring at particular areas of the Cultural Heritage item.

The hardware setup of Scan4Reco system: Various sensor devices are mounted on the positioning system built by Ormylia Foundation and consisting of a XYZ stage and a rotational motor performing rotation around the Z axis, while the artwork is placed on the rotary stage. The control unit hosts two rack-mount computers, UPS, keyboard, monitor and controllers for the motion and sensor devices.


The first stage is to acquire a 3D model of the object roughly with depth sensor from CERTH and then in high-resolution, exceding 50micromters, with 3D photogrametry by RFSAT, using a setup as shown below for the case of an icon of Saint Archangel Michael. The 50 Megapixel Canon 5DS-R camera is placed accurately using robotic arm to capture images from exact viewpoints, then sends them to core application for performing 3D modelling to custom quality/performance choices. Click below to find out about results achieved.

The Scan4Reco consortium will organize, together with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the project's workshop on "Novel non-invasive technologies assisted by robotic & Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage preservation & documentation".



The Workshop was held in the premises of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on the 25^th of September 2018 and was attended by large number of academics, post-graduate students and end users involved practically in the protection, preservation and restoration of Cultural Heritage objects.

	Workshop poster
	Workshop agenda

Since the beginning of the project, the SCAN4RECO consortium has published over fifty (50) peer-reviewed articles in prestigeous journals, presenting them at several conferences and workshops. The list of those can be found at:

Project WEB site:

http://www.scan4reco.eu/scan4reco/content/publications

Open Access Repositories:

https://zenodo.org/communities/horizon2020-reflective7-scan4reco/

http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/197123_en.html

Institutional WEB sites of project partners:

RFSAT: http://www.rfsat.com/index.php/en/results/publications.html

CRS4: http://www.crs4.it/vic/cgi-bin/project-page.cgi?acronym=Scan4Reco

	A database of data from artificially ageing samples of paints and metals have been produced by OF-ADC and Opificio and has been made available to professionals as part of Open Access data from SCAN4RECO project.
	A new version of the Scan4Reco Virtual Museum with Oculus support is available for download. A demo video using Oculus inside the Scan4Reco Virtual Museum can be seen at: https://youtu.be/W3bZKp8FzAI

NOTE:The SCAN4RECO project is fully compliant with Open Access guidelines of the European Commission with respect to dissemination of reseach output of projects funded by the Horizon 2020 research framework, as outlined at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm?pg=openaccess