Mixed X-Ray Image Separation for Artworks with Concealed Designs
Abstract
In this paper, we focus on X-ray images of paintings with concealed sub-surface designs (e.g., deriving from reuse of the painting support or revision of a composition by the artist), which include contributions from both the surface painting and the concealed features. In particular, we propose a self-supervised deep learning-based image separation approach that can be applied to the X-ray images from such paintings to separate them into two hypothetical X-ray images. One of these reconstructed images is related to the X-ray image of the concealed painting, while the second one contains only information related to the X-ray of the visible painting. The proposed separation network consists of two components: the analysis and the synthesis sub-networks. The analysis sub-network is based on learned coupled iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithms (LCISTA) designed using algorithm unrolling techniques, and the synthesis sub-network consists of several linear mappings. The learning algorithm operates in a totally self-supervised fashion without requiring a sample set that contains both the mixed X-ray images and the separated ones. The proposed method is demonstrated on a real painting with concealed content, Do\~na Isabel de Porcel by Francisco de Goya, to show its effectiveness.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2201.09167,
title = {Mixed X-Ray Image Separation for Artworks with Concealed Designs},
author = {Wei Pu and Jun-Jie Huang and Barak Sober and Nathan Daly and Catherine Higgitt and Ingrid Daubechies and Pier Luigi Dragotti and Miguel Rodigues},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.09167},
year = {2022}
}