The research of the Image Processing and Communications Lab of the University of Florence in the cultural heritage field

The goal of this paper is to present the research that has been carried out over the last 10 years in the Image Processing and Communications Lab of the University of Florence for developing applications for the cultural heritage field. In particular research has focused on the following issues: high resolution acquisition of paintings by means of mosaicing techniques, color calibration of the acquisition devices, tools for forecasting the results of restoration processes (in particular with reference to the cleaning process), systems for producing virtually restored digital copies of paintings (in particular for ¯lling in cracks and lacunas). The problems related to the distribution of the digital copies have also been considered, in particular with reference to the watermarking of the images for copyright protection. The methodologies developed by the Lab with reference to the above mentioned issues will be described, and the main results discussed.