Condition diagnosing easel tempera paintings by the high-resolution optical coherence tomography method

Abstract

Peculiarities of using optical coherence tomography for examining the condition of valuable paintings are considered. A full-field optoelectronic system for determination of the internal microstructure of inhomogeneous media with high resolution and operation speed using a Wiener adaptive filtering algorithm for dynamic signal processing in time-domain optical coherence tomography is presented. Examples of determination of specific features of the microstructure of antique easel tempera paintings, such as thickness of the varnish layer and characteristics of its craquelure, morphology of the subsequent overpaint of the author layer, and loss of the varnish-and-paint layer by shelling, for determining the condition of an art object are presented.