Esplorazione virtuale 4D del codice antico

In the field of book heritage, digitization activities, carried out by photographic and 2D scanning techniques, focus mainly on the content of manuscripts. However, from a codicological point of view, the structural features of a book such as the binding and/or the book block, are also of considerable importance. In addition, some elements of interest may be buried into the binding or hidden under the pictorial layer of the illuminations. All these elements constitute the so-called 4th dimension of the code and they can be detected by means of imaging techniques, such as pulsed thermography (PT). PT is a non-destructive technique that enables the depth-resolved investigation of different types of features. However, this technique provides results as a sequence of temperature distribution maps (thermo-grams) that may be unclear for a non-expert audience. For this reason, the end-user experience could be facilitated by including the hidden elements detected by PT in a 3D virtual representation of the book. In this work, some of the results obtained in the framework of the "Codex 4D" project will be shown. In particular, PT is applied to obtain a 4D virtual representation of subsurface features buried in ancient codices. Therefore, a web 3D platform, based on the ATON framework developed by CNR ISPC, is developed for the virtual exploration of the code. Finally, the exploration of the 4D representation will also be proposed by a holographic showcase for museums and libraries where the code will be represented in a dramaturgical style.