Advanced hardware-registered multimodal platform for cultural heritage investigation: integrating 3D, reflectance imaging spectroscopy, and macro-Raman mapping

Year: 2026

Authors: Righetti V., Pezzati L., Balbas D.Q., Chaban A., Innocenti S., Striova J.

Autors Affiliation: Natl Inst Opt CNR INO, Natl Res Council, Largo E Fermi 6, I-50125 Florence, FI, Italy; La SapienzaUnivers Rome, Dept Sci Antiqu, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, I-00186 Rome, RM, Italy.

Abstract: We present a custom platform for multimodal analysis that is currently integrating 3D scanning, reflectance imaging spectroscopy (RIS) in the visible range (420-720 nm), and Sequentially Shifted Excitation macro-Raman mapping (SSETM-MA-Raman) within a single, fully spatially hardware-registered framework. The system was conceived to overcome one of the major limitations in multimodal cultural heritage diagnostics: the difficulty of reliably registering regions of interests and aligning heterogeneous datasets acquired with independent instruments. The core of the platform is an optical breadboard, moved by a three-axis motorised stage with micrometric repeatability, and custom control software enabling automated acquisition, instrument synchronisation, and intrinsic spatial co-registration across modalities. Here, we describe the system architecture, the acquisition pipeline, and the Raman handshaking routine, demonstrating how the integration of topography-driven autofocusing with coordinated RIS and SSETM-MA-Raman mapping enhances accuracy, reproducibility, and facilitates data interpretation. The potential and performance of the platform were evaluated on a real-case scenario: a contemporary painting by Gastone Novelli (1925-1968) from the Peggy Guggenheim collection (Venice, Italy), currently under restoration at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, Italy. The results confirm the strength of this new hardware-registered system as a robust solution for advanced multimodal investigations in heritage science, producing co-registered datasets containing complementary morphological and spectroscopic information.

Journal/Review: JOURNAL OF PHYSICS-PHOTONICS

Volume: 8 (2)      Pages from: 25031-1  to: 25031-14

More Information: This research was supported by the EU ARTEMIS project. G.A. 101188009. D.Q.B, A.C and S.I. acknowledge the H2IOSC Project-Humanities and Cultural Heritage Italian Open Science Cloud (www.h2iosc.cnr.it/), funded by the European Union NextGenerationEU-National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP)-Mission 4 ’Education and Research’ Component 2 ’From research to business’ Investment 3.1, ’Fund for the realization of an integrated system of research and innovation infrastructures’, Action 3.1.1 ’Creation of new research infrastructures strengthening of existing ones and their networking for Scientific Excellence under Horizon Europe’-Project code IR0000029-CUP-B63C22000730005. Implementing Entity CNR.
KeyWords: macro-Raman mapping; painting; heritage science; chemical imaging; 3D scanning; reflectance imaging spectroscopy; hardware-registered system
DOI: 10.1088/2515-7647/ae6bfa