Radio frequency based material estimation of old age 3D sculptures

Abstract

The cultural heritage has its importance due to the information communicated by the heritage to the future generations. It is difficult to preserve cultural heritage over the centuries because of their volatile nature. In this paper, the preservation aids are considered for sculptures. The sculpture also includes the type of monument. The challenges are face deterioration during logistic and handling. Hence, it destroys the information carried by sculpture. In addition, the knowledge about materials used for construction of these sculptures help in maintenance of these sculpture. It helps in reconstructing the shape and color, which have been damaged earlier. The common techniques reported in the literature for broken structure and material estimation are optical coherence tomography (OCT), X-ray, THz scanning and Raman spectroscopy. These techniques used for retrieving material information are not portable and are costlier. Thus, the need is established in this paper for the device offering 3D scanning along with the material details of each scanned pixel. This paper aims at material estimation of old age sculptures from 11th century CE and 13th century CE housed at Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, India using radio frequency technique. The device captures the 3D scanning of the sculptures to maintain its heritage for a longer time. Further, the device needs to be portable and affordable so that it can be provided to various stakeholders of culture heritage preserve.