Imaging Regions of Interest

[Michael Toth]

As we've discussed the Archimedes Palimpsest images and data at various forums, image scientists have asked about the regions of interest (ROI's) where scholars are still looking for more details from the images.

In response to these queries, Reviel Netz cites the following:

"Clearly the questions I have now are with the Stomachion page (177-172), the penultimate Method page (158-159) and the last Method page (165-168).

"In 177-172 nothing is easy and any region offers some room for improvement.

"In 158-159 the challenges are almost all on the 158v-159r side.

"In 165-168 what matters are the edges (the "cut" column), in the Method side (i.e. 165).

"The three problems are quite distinct: 177-172 is mostly mold damage; 158-159 is more specific faintness; 165 is a peculiar edge area.

"Hope this helps somewhat - Reviel."

Other scholars, in particular of the Hyperides and other texts, should feel free to post their ROI's here. And in turn image scientists and technicians should feel free to host links to their images that may prove of use.

Thanks,

Mike Toth

[Michael Toth]

One of Roger Easton's first-year students, Kevin Bloechl, created a processed image from the UV image of 120v-121r -- it's also up on the Image Bank dated 22 December 2008.

Roger notes: This is a principal-component analysis. The grayscale rendering varies with location -- he didn't try to maintain it across the image -- but the text it shows is tantalizing; it looks a lot like a sharpie.

I uploaded the full-sized image to the image bank -- both as a JPEG (18MBytes) -- http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/easton/Archie/120-121/120v-121r_Alex02v_Sinar_LED365_01_stitched.jpg

and as a TIFF (171 MBytes) at http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/easton/Archie/120-121/120v-121r_Alex02v_Sinar_LED365_01_stitched.tif

[Will Noel]

On December 6th, Nigel Wilson, Bob Sharples, Marwan Rashed, and Natalie Tchernetska met in London to have a further "group" crack at the Alexander text, and amazingly, made really exciting progress. They think about ten further meetings and they will have a text that is worth publishing - and that it will be important. This is cool.

As you know, this is a really tricky philological task, and any help imaging scientists can give to them as they work by processing the images further might just pay huge dividends.

If your idea of a fun vacation is to play with tricky images (and I know it is), then the bit of Alexander to try to make more legible is the bottom third of 120r-121v, and all of 120v-121r. The philosophers are next meeting on January 31.