See-Through Museum Project: computational methods in the service of cultural heritage

Until now, the best way to preserve a record of a past event, whether it was an invention of a new form of fine arts 200 years ago or an extinction of some species 200 million years ago, was to keep a physical evidence of the event. So the modern museums such as Rijksmuseum and Naturalis played an important role of memory banks of our own cultural history and the history of other species on Earth. Obviously, storing physical records of the past events has drawbacks: need for space, various efforts needed to stop the decay of physical objects, difficulties with displaying and transportation. So how can we make sure that the heritage and natural history collections become fully digital and virtual in future? In this talk I will give some examples of typical research questions that are considered in the world of cultural heritage and show how mathematical research and computer hardware developments can lead to improvements in the key 3D imaging methods: X-ray and Neutron Computer Tomography (CT).