AMMIRA: an easy and effective system to manage digital images of artworks.

This paper describes the salient features of the hardware-software system AMMIRA, a framework for the virtual restoration of artworks, based on a combination of multispectral and 3D imaging, and digital image analysis and processing techniques. The imaging system is composed of a multispectral camera and a digital projector, for both 2D and 3D data acquisition. The 3D surface representation is used to correct geometrical distortions, and the rich and diverse information content of the 2D multispectral images is exploited by statistical techniques to extract individual features and to attenuate degradations. Finally, the entire digital object history - all the acquisition and processing steps, with the corresponding parameters - is stored in metadata files, for future evaluation of the restoration process and the creation of an expert knowledge database.