Comparing the effectiveness of hyperspectral imaging and Raman spectroscopy: a case study on Armenian manuscripts

There is great practical and scholarly interest in the identification of pigments in works of art. This paper compares the effectiveness of the widely used Raman Spectroscopy (RS), with hyperspectral imaging (HSI), a reflectance imaging technique, to evaluate the reliability of HSI for the identification of pigments in historic works of art and to ascertain if there are any benefits from using HSI or a combination of both. We undertook a case study based on six Armenian illuminated manuscripts (eleventh–eighteenth centuries CE) in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. RS, and HSI (380–1000 nm) were both used to analyse the same 10 folios, with the data then used to test the accuracy and efficiency of HSI against the known results from RS using reflectance spectra reference databases compiled by us for the project. HSI over the wavelength range 380–1000 nm agreed with RS at best 93% of the time, and performance was enhanced using the SFF algorithm and by using a database with many similarities to the articles under analysis. HSI is significantly quicker at scanning large areas, and can be used alongside RS to identify and map large areas of pigment more efficiently than RS alone. HSI therefore has potential for improving the speed of pigment identification across manuscript folios and artwork but must be used in conjunction with a technique such as RS. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40494-018-0206-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.