A combined IR, NIR and MA-XRF material inspection method

In the study of historical paintings and as a preparation for restoration activities of such artefacts, it is of great relevance to investigate which materials and degradation products are present and how these are distributed at or below the painting surface. Consequently, a large number of analytical techniques have been developed that can be used for the identification of artists' materials. However, most of the existing techniques are increasingly contested because they require destructive sampling while in situ analysis with mobile equipment provides compositional data from only a limited number of individual points. In response, mobile scanning instruments for chemical imaging were developed, such as macro X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF), that supply highly specific chemical information, but entail long scanning times for recording full spectra. As an alternative, thermography inspection is used for material parameter identification but also for art inspection as it is particularly fast. Therefore the goal of this research proposal is to eliminate the drawbacks of current inspection techniques by preceding the chemical speciation of different materials in a painting or surface layer (with XRF) with a swift chemical screening with thermography in the nearinfrared range. The resulting multi-sensor inspection methodology combines fast inspection with a slow inspection to achieve more accurate results and faster inspection times, including IR pigment identification algorithm.

Keywords:IN SITU SPECTROSCOPY

Disciplines:Spectroscopic methods, Image and language processing, Collections heritage