Goal
The goal of Aracne is to develop a tool to count threads along large areas in X-Ray plates canvases. Thread counting has been widely used to characterise the fabrics of the paintings, hence allowing, mainly by comparison, to date or determine the authorship of a work of art.
Description
The main objective was to provide a tool to count vertical and horizontal threads along large areas in a X-ray image. We have developed a software not just fulfilling this request, but endowed Aracne with the following additional features:
- Thread counting along the whole image, for every spot in the canvas.
- Analysis of the angle deviation of the threads from the horizontal and vertical axes.
- Analysis of the power spectrum density.
Authorship
The Aracne software was born as a collaboration of Laura Alba Carcelén at the Museo Nacional del Prado (MNP) and Juan José Murillo-Fuentes at the Universidad de Sevilla (US) where the software was developed. We are deeply grateful to Laura Alba, for her useful comments, suggestions, test and supervision of the Aracne software and to El Museo Nacional del Prado for supplying the material, X-rays plates of canvases, to perform this research.
Laura Alba Carcelén is a curator in the technical and documentation department at MNP, while Juan José Murillo is full professor (catedrático) of telecommunication engineering at the Department of Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones (DTSC).
In the software development, at DTSC of the US, the professors Irene Fondón-García and Francisco Simois did collaborate along with the researchers Marta Ternero-Gutiérrez and Pablo Aguilera-Bonet, and the student Lucía Córdoba-Saborido.
Download and Install Aracne
To download and install Aracne see installation. You can use the test image if you do not have any other. In the manual section you will find further information on the use of the SW. See license and terms. For any other information on commercial exploitation or request to process your material please write us at murillo@us.es.
