Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, April 5, 2004 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Roger Easton, Jr., and Keith Knox

"Reading Between the Lines: Applications of Imaging Technology to Recover Lost Writings"

ABSTRACT -- This talk describes the application of modern imaging technologies to the problem of reading "missing" text in several manuscripts with great historical and cultural significance. The authors are on the Imaging Team that is working to recover the original writing from the Archimedes Palimpsest, which is a tenth-century manuscript with the oldest known copies of seven treatises of Archimedes. They have applied modern imaging techniques to the problem of reading other manuscripts, including fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

SPEAKER -- Roger L. Easton, Jr. received the B.S. degree in Astronomy from Haverford College, the M.S. in Physics from the University of Maryland, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona. He is on the faculty of the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in linear systems, optical imaging, and digital image processing. His research interests include the application of digital image processing to text documents and manuscripts, optical signal processing, and computer-generated holography. His book, "Linear Mathematics with Applications to Imaging" is scheduled to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2004.

Keith Knox received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Optics from the University of Rochester. For over 25 years, he worked in the Xerox research laboratories, developing image correction and enhancement algorithms for raster images. He is currently a Senior Scientist at Boeing LTS at the Air Force Research Laboratory facilities in Kihei, Hawaii. His research interests include imaging through the atmosphere and image restoration of ancient documents. He is a Fellow of both the Optical Society of America and of the Society of Imaging Science and Technology.