Development of an open user platform for X-ray Ramanscattering and its potential in image processing for cultural heritage

Recent developments in inelastic and X-ray Raman scattering have shown major interest for studying the organic chemistry of cultural heritage artifacts. This LTP aims to address the main limitation of the technique by lowering the deposited dose. This can be achieved by optimizing 3-D image acquisition and chemical speciation through coupling with advanced statistical analysis and machine learning, exploiting redundancy in the collected data. This project assembles experts in heritage materials, data science and inelastic scattering instrumentation. Chemical composition and degradation mechanisms of contemporary art materials will be studied using materials from a major post-war, contemporary artist: Simon Hantaï. XRS experiments will be performed iteratively with methdological developments to advance the imaging processing software. An openly available environment to process datasets acquired will be created for ESRF users with applications to all fields of materials sciences.