Leuven Camera Dome System

The Leuven Camera Dome System (LCDS)
A new method for the digitization and study of cuneiform texts and ancient artifacts

Since 2004, researchers – engineers and Ancient Near Eastern scholars – of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) have worked on a new method to make the study of cuneiform tablets more accessible for worldwide consultation. To accomplish this, their main target was to find solutions to enhance readability through an objective registration medium (such as conventional digital photography). The solution was found in the construction of the so-called Leuven Camera Dome, combined with the use of a viewer computer program with specifically developed filters.

The Leuven Camera Dome includes a lighting system consisting of 260 LED light sources, mathematically spread over the surface of a hemisphere. A face of a tablet is digitized by lighting each of these 260 LEDs separately, while taking 260 pictures. Every recording sheds light on the three-dimensional surface of the tablet at a different angle. As a result, each part of the tablets surface is registered under its most ideal illumination angle. Afterwards, all 260 recordings are computed into one integrated file. This file can then be uploaded into and visualized by a specially written program, the Cuneiform Viewer. In the same way an assyriologist operates while holding an actual tablet, this program allows to identify each sign by searching for the best lighting angle for that particular sign. By moving the mouse pointer over the screen of a computer, the angle of the illumination changes instantly.

The result of the registration of the cuneiform tablet with the LCDS is a digital file, which makes it possible to further enhance the visualization by applying different kinds of filters within the Cuneiform Viewer. For example, the extraction of the colors greatly simplifies the reading of the text without losing any three-dimensional information as color only complicates the interpretation of the signs for the brain. The most interesting of these filters proved to be the application which calculates a line drawing based on the original data.

This system has been used, tested and refined over the last years.First on the already published study collection of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and later on the unpublished and at that time still largely unstudied late Old Babylonian tablets from the collection of Cornell University (US). The study of this text corpus was facilitated with great success by the use of the LCDS, in 2009 the results of this research was published by Karel Van Lerberghe and Gabriella Voet. Since 2008 Dr. Anne Goddeeris works with the LCDS at the Jena Universität, were she studies and prepares for publication a part of the Hillprecht Collection. During spring 2009 the system was deployed in the field at the excavations of the Leuven professor Harco Willems at Dayr al-Barsha in Egypt. It was used to register some hundred sealings on jar stoppers.

More on the Leuven Camera Dome System can be found on the website, http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/assyriologie/cuneiform.htm. On that website the Cuneiform Viewer can be downloaded for free. Via links, pages with all digitized cuneiform documents from the Leuven Collection and the recently published texts from the Cornell University Near Eastern Collection can be consulted and downloaded.

The development of the system presented above, was part of the larger effort of the European Network of Excellence in Open Cultural Heritage (EPOCH). The engineers involved in the mini-dome project are Geert Willems, Frank Verbiest, Wim Moreau and Prof. Luc Van Gool. The assyriologists are Hendrik Hameeuw and Prof. Karel Van Lerberge.


Bibliography

Willems G., F. Verbiest, W. Moreau, H. Hameeuw, K. Van Lerberghe & L.Van Gool, Easy and cost-effective cuneiform digitizing, in: M. Mudge, N. Ryan & R. Scopigno (eds.) The 6th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (VAST 2005), Pisa 2005, 73-80. (.pdf)

Havemann S., V. Settgast, D. Fellner, G. Willems, L. Van Gool, G.Müller, M. Schneider & R. Klein, The Presentation of Cultural Heritage Models in Epoch, in: Proceedings of EPOCH Open Digital Cultural Heritage Systems Conference, Congresso Rospigliosi, Rome, 25-26, February 2008, Rome 2008. (.pdf)

Van Lerberghe K. & G. Voet, Late Old-Babylonian Tablets and Sealings from a Temple Archive at Dur-Abiešuh (CUSAS 8), Ithaca 2009.