An affordable multispectral imaging system for the digital museum

The use of multispectral imaging for the acquisition of the image content of a digital museum is proposed. The advantages of multispectral imaging over "traditional" RGB imaging are explained, and the two existing approaches to multispectral acquisition, based on narrowband and wideband sensors respectively, are detailed. The characteristics of wideband multispectral acquisition systems in view of their possible large-scale use for digital museum content acquisition are then discussed, and an example system assembled by the authors and tested in acquisitions of real artifacts is introduced. Finally, it is shown that multispectral representations collected with such systems can be used for several purposes, including reproduction with current and future devices and support for monitoring and restoration, making them a natural choice for master copies in cultural institutions' archives.