Image restoration of damaged or erased manuscripts

Modern imaging techniques have been applied to ancient manuscripts to recover writings that are not visible to the naked eye. Over the years, many of these manuscripts have been damaged by the elements or even intentionally erased and re-used to record other information. To successfully recover text from such documents, it is important to understand the nature of the writings and the materials on which they are written. Different imaging and processing techniques are needed, depending on the type of ink used and the condition of the manuscript. In this paper, we describe several imaging techniques and how they are applied.