Development of Thermal Principles for the Automation of the Thermographic Monitoring of Cultural Heritage

Abstract

The continuous deterioration of elements, with high patrimonial value over time, can only be mitigated or annulled through the application of techniques that facilitate the preventative detection of the possible agents of deterioration. InfraRed Thermography (IRT) is one of the most used techniques for this task. However, there are few IRT methodologies, which can automatically monitor the cultural heritage field, and are vitally important in eliminating the subjectivity in interpreting and accelerating the analysis process. In this work, a study is performed on a tessellatum layer of a mosaic to automatically: (i) Detect the first appearance of the thermal footprint of internal water, (ii) delimit the contours of the thermal footprint of internal water from its first appearance, and (iii) classify between harmful and non-harmful internal water. The study is based on the analysis of the temperature distribution of each thermal image. Five thermal images sequences are acquired during the simulation of different real situations, obtaining a set of promising results for the optimization of the thermographic inspection process, while discussing the following recommended steps to be taken in the study for future researches.