Digital Anastylosis of Frescoes challeNgE (DAFNE)

MOTIVATION AND TOPICS

To highlight the importance of cultural heritage assets conservation, and promoting restoration of artworks that would otherwise be lost forever, we propose an international challenge to look for solutions that support image reconstruction after destructive phenomena, such as earthquakes or wars. In particular, we focus on reconstruction of frescoes and deal with anastylosis, which is an archaeological term for a reconstruction technique where ruined buildings/monuments are restored using the original architectural elements to the greatest degree possible.

The current state-of-the-art research in virtual anastylosis presents several trials and case studies based on a combination of different digital measurements and modelling techniques, accompanied by the interpretation of data coming from documentary sources. Goal of this Special Issue is to collect the best solutions to virtually recomposing destroyed frescoes, starting from the digitalization of their broken collected elements. In this framework, the restoration could be interpreted as a very challenging ‘puzzle’ formed by original fragments of the destroyed fresco.

Critical issues are due to: i) the number of randomly mixed fragments is usually huge; ii) fragments are mostly corrupted, and with general irregular shapes; iii) mismatch of the boundaries of the collected eroded pieces; iv) some pieces have gone irretrievably lost; v) due to extreme fragmentation, presence of spurious/distractors elements, due to pieces of different frescoes also involved in the building collapse.

Contributors to this Special Issue will be entitled, at their discretion, to use a number of different cases of destroyed well-known frescoes that have been simulated in order to populate a dataset containing fragmented pieces, useful for the development and testing phases of the challenge. Five different parameters are used for the generation of elements: the number of fragments, their average size, the percentage of missing parts, the percentage of spurious fragments, and the average ratio between the fragment area after the erosion and the original area in the plane tessellation.

This initiative can bring to different strategies. The Pattern Recognition community is involved since 1968 and will keenly participate applying advanced computer techniques such as Machine Learning and Deep Learning. But also some interactive solutions can be conceived, in particular involving autistic subjects, favoring their social inclusion in productive activities, exploiting their peculiarities and abilities, and promoting and appreciating their potential.

Prospective authors can submit their results related to a solution that reassembles a specific set of elements, discarding the spurious ones. The best papers describing methods and the results will be published, after a peer review, in this Special Issue.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Consistent image completion
• General wall painting reconstruction algorithms
• Image reassembling using deep learning techniques
• Interactive solutions for image restoration
• Patch match image editing and synthesis
• Re-colorization and art restoration from incomplete data

IMPORTANT DATES

Call for paper October 1^st, 2019

Submission period: March 1^st – April 20^th, 2020

First notification: May 20^th, 2020

Revised manuscript submission: June 20^th, 2020

Second notification: October 20^th, 2020

Final revised submission: November 20^th, 2020

It will follow the standard PRLetters scheme. Each paper will be reviewed by (at least) two referees and only two reviewing rounds are planned out of which major revision is possible only for the first round.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Perspective authors are invited to submit their manuscript during the Submission period. Papers should be prepared by adhering to the PRLetters Guidelines.

Papers must be submitted online via the Pattern Recognition Letters website (http://ees.elsevier.com/patrec/). When submitting their papers through the online system, authors must select the acronym ”VSI: DAFNE” as the article type.selecting the choice that indicates this special issue.

Prepare your paper following the Journal guidelines for Authors (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505619/authorinstructions)

Please, remember that DAFNE is a Virtual Special Issue so that the instructions to be followed are those for regular papers. In particular, the maximal length of each paper is 7 pages in the PRLetters layout. The pages might become 8 in the final paper if reviewers request additions that cannot fit the 7 pages.

Priority will be given to the papers with high novelty and originality. Papers should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. If the submissions are extended works of previously published papers, the original works should be included and the description of the changes that have been made should be provided.

For additional information, please contact one of the Managing Guest Editor at the address below or visit http://vision.unipv.it/DAFNE

Virginio Cantoni University of Pavia, Italy virginio.cantoni@unipv.it

GUEST EDITORS

Virginio Cantoni, Managing Guest Editor,
University of Pavia, Italy, virginio.cantoni@unipv.it

Gianluca Foresti, Guest Editor
University of Udine, Italy, President of CVPL, gianluca.foresti@uniud.it

Niculae Sebe, Guest Editor
University of Trento, Italy, General Chair ICIAP, sebe@disi.unitn.it