Image-Based Empirical Information Acquisition, Scientific Reliability, and Long-Term Digital Preservation for the Natural Sciences and Cultural Heritage

The tools and standards of best practice adopted by natural science (NS) and cultural heritage (CH) professionals will determine the digital future of NS and CH digital imaging work. This tutorial discusses emerging digital technologies and explores issues influencing widespread adoption of digital practices for NS and CH. The tutorial explores a possible digital future for NS and CH through key concepts; adoption of digital surrogates, empirical (scientific) provenance, perpetual digital conservation, and ‘born archival’ semantic knowledge management. The tutorial discusses multiple image based technologies along with current research including; Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), Photometric Stereo, and new research in the next generation of multi-view RTI. This research involves extending stereo correspondence methods. These technologies permit generation of digital surrogates that can serve as trusted representations of ‘real world’ content. The tutorial explores how empirical provenance contributes to the reliability of digital surrogates, and how perpetual digital conservation can ensure that digital surrogates will be archived and available for future generations. The tutorial investigates the role of semantically based knowledge management strategies and their use in simplifying ease of use by natural science and CH professionals as well as long term preservation activities. The tutorial also investigates these emerging technologies’ potential to democratize digital technology, making digital tools and methods easy to adopt and make NS and CH materials widely available to diverse audiences. The tutorial concludes with handson demonstrations of image-based capture and processing methods and a practical problem solving Q&A with the audience.