Cradle Removal in X-Ray Images of Panel Paintings

Abstract

We address the problem of mitigating the visually displeasing effects of cradling in X-ray images of panel paintings. The proposed algorithm consists of three stages. In the first stage the location of the cradling is detected semi-automatically and the grayscale inconsistency, caused by the thickness of the cradling, is adjusted. In a second stage we use a blind source separation method to decompose the X-ray image into a so-called cartoon part and a texture part, where the latter contains mostly the wood grain from both the panel as well as the cradling. In the third and final stage the algorithm tries to learn the distinction between the texture patterns that originate from the cradling and those from other components such as the panel and/or the painting. The goal of the proposed research is to improve the readability of X-ray images of paintings for art experts.