Abstract
The identification of wood species used in the cultural artifacts is important in terms of their preservation and inheritance. However, a nondestructive method is required, and wood samples must be partly cut off in conventional methods such as microscopy. In this study, we constructed a novel system for wood identification using image recognition of X-ray computed tomography images of eight major species used in Japanese wooden sculptures. Texture analyses of the computed tomography images were carried out using the gray-level co-occurrence matrix, from which 15 textural features were calculated. The k-nearest-neighbor algorithm combined with cross validation was applied for classification and evaluation of the system. Input datasets with a variation in image qualities (resolution, gray level, and image size) were investigated using this novel system, and the accuracy was greater than 98 % when the input images had a certain quality level. Although there are still technical problems to be overcome, progress in the development of automated identification is extremely encouraging in that such an approach has the potential to make a valuable contribution in adding scientific species notion to the artifacts; otherwise, only the literal documents are available.
Highlights
Wood identification has been providing useful information of the origins of heritages and sometimes provided a new perspective
The images were cropped so that the annual rings are arranged in the vertical direction, some images from Cryptomeria japonica from the plantation forest (Cj1) were difficult to arrange in this manner because its wood block had smaller annual rings in diameter
The microscopic anatomical features were not well observed in these images as expected, but they obviously showed some differences among the species
Summary
Wood identification has been providing useful information of the origins of heritages and sometimes provided a new perspective. Wood samples have to be observed from three orthogonal directions, namely, the transverse, radial, and tangential directions, to obtain the appropriate information of their anatomical features. This method becomes routine after training and experience, but it is not applicable to culturally important wood works or artifacts, where only nondestructive methods are allowed to be used. One example is the use of synchrotron radiation X-ray microtomography, where the three-dimensional (3D) wood structure has been reconstructed at a resolution of 0.5 lm [6] In this technique, wood identification based on the IAWA list [1, 2] is possible. The sample size and machine time are limited; the measurement is limited to selected important materials
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