Image Processing for Cultural Heritage Accessibility: Digitizing the Bayeux Tapestry

Overview & Synopsis

This work showcases image processing and computer vision algorithms, in the light of accessibility to cultural heritage artifacts. We emphasize the potential of multimodal 2D image registration and fine-scale 3D-reconstruction techniques, with the aim to ease the work of historians and museum curators, as well as to make artifacts more accessible to the general public or to visually impaired people. This study focuses on the Bayeux Tapestry, a world-famous medieval wool embroidery included in UNESCO's Memory of the World register, and of fundamental importance for both the scientific community and the general public. This exceptional testimony on the society at the eleventh century is both a singular artwork and a historical source on a major event in the history of medieval Europe. Developing state-of-the-art image processing tools for its digitization will ease not only its access, but also its analysis, inspection and reproduction.