Smart-phone-assisted digital rejuvenation of medieval paintings

Project Summary

Liuyi Zhu (Computer Science, Math), Gilad Amitai (Masters, Statistics), Raphael Kim (Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering), and Andreas Badea (East Chapel Hill High School) spent ten weeks streamlining and automating the process of electronically rejuvenating medieval artwork. They used a 14th-century altarpiece by Francescussio Ghissi as a working example.

Themes and Categories
Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Computational Humanities, Data+, Social Sciences
Year
2017
Contact
Paul Bendich
Mathematics
bendich@math.duke.edu

Project Results: The team built a prototype app which transforms the original image, using a combination of techniques including color segmentation, crack detection and inpainting, color mapping, punchmark detection, and gilding, They have distributed the app to conservators at the North Carolina Museum of Art for initial testing.

This project is inspired by the experience of the Duke Bass Connections team that developed the virtual rejuvenation of the Ghissi altarpiece, which went on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Sponsored by Bass Connections

Click here for the Executive Summary

Faculty Lead: Ingrid Daubechies

Project Managers: Robert Ravier, Bruno Cornelis

Related People

Related News

Rejuvenating Art With Data
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
A Data+ team led by Ingrid Daubechies explored the feasibility of building an app that museum v ...

Related Projects

Farm to Fork (Year 2)

A team of students collaborating with Duke School of Medicine's Root Causes Fresh Produce Program, community members, and physicians throughout the Duke Health network will help integrate data from food deliveries to Duke Health patients with patient health record data and other available data sources to create a dashboard that can analyze, predict, and manage the Root Causes' "Food as Medicine" program. Specific outcomes will contribute to improving the Program's quantitative evaluation of its health impact as well as efficiency and satisfaction for its patients. Students will be assisted with IRB approval and mentorship from faculty and community advisors.

Project Leads: Esko Brummel, Willis Wong

 

Melting Ice, Shifting Krill

A team of students led by researchers at the Duke Marine Lab will explore the changing distribution of krill around the Antarctic Peninsula. Krill are a key prey species in this ecosystem, supporting a number of animals including whales, seals, and penguins, but they are dependent on winter sea ice and may be in trouble as climate change progresses. Using data from acoustic zooplankton surveys, students will create maps and other products to visualize the spatial distribution of krill over the past 20 summers, then create metrics that allow us to quantify the way that krill distribution around the Antarctic Peninsula is changing as the climate shifts and ice melts. These results will be key to our understanding of the impacts of climate change on this polar ecosystem.

 

Project Lead: Douglas Nowacek

Project Manager: Amanda Lohmann

 

Data Science for Community Safety in Durham

A team of students will partner closely with the City of Durham's newly formed Community Safety Department.  The Community Safety Department's mission is to identify, implement, and evaluate new approaches to enhance public safety that may not involve a law enforcement response or the criminal justice system. The student team will (1) analyze and identify geographic and temporal patterns in 911 calls for service, (2) conceptualize and build an abstracted data pipeline and tools that would enrich currently available 911 data with other social, economic, and health-related data, (3) explore associations between areas of high call volume, indicators of mental health distress, and histories of dispossession; and (4) identify methods by which future researchers could examine connections between varied 911 incident responses (e.g. police response, unarmed response, joint police, and mental health response) and life trajectories (e.g. arrest, jail time, hospitalization, unemployment, etc.).

 

Project Lead: Greg Herschlag, Anise Van, City of Durham

Project Manager: Deekshita Saikia

 

See all Research