From Physics to Art and Back: Optical Coherence Tomography for Art Conservation, Archaeology and History

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), a scanning Michelson interferometer, is normally associated with biomedical imaging, however, it has also made significant impact in other domains such as non-invasive imaging of cultural heritage. Materials encountered in cultural heritage is diverse and hence it presents new challenges to the design of OCT. The Imaging and Sensing for Archaeology, Art history and Conservation (ISAAC) Lab has been engaged in OCT development tailored to heritage applications since 2004, and developed the first MIR OCT at 2 microns for highly scattering materials with low water content. In this talk, I will give an overview of our OCT work and the recent developments.