Scientific Reviews

6 NOTIZIARIO NEUTRONI E LUCE DI SINCROTRONE • Vol. 12 n. 2 July 2007 Abstract The aim of the ambitious ANCIENT CHARM project is the development of new imaging methods for a non-destructive analysis of archaeological objects using neutron beams: Neutron Resonant Capture Imaging, Prompt Gamma Activation Imaging and Neutron Diffraction Tomography. Together with the well-established Neutron Tomography, these methods will provide a comprehensive and complementary set of position dependent information for the examined objects. The information they provide includes internal structure, strain, phase and elemental composition. One of the crucial tasks of the project is a detailed comparison of the 3-dimensional information provided by every single method. A precise alignment of the 3D data from each method is an essential prerequisite. A common approach is to use external markers fixed on the examined object and use them to align the data. In this article we explore the practicability of an alternative method that would precisely align the images without the use of markers, based solely on the information contained in the images. A fully automated registration method used in medical applications (PET and MRI data registration) has been adapted for the characteristic data of the archaeological test objects. The applicability of this registration algorithm is demonstrated on a 3-dimensional registration of X-ray and Neutron Tomography datasets of ANCIENT CHARM test objects.