Recently many efforts to perform virtual restoration of archaeological papyri have been proposed. Papyrus degradation is often very hard so that physical unrolling is sometime absolutely impossible. In this paper, a new virtual restoration methodology based on software manipulation of X-ray tomographic images is described. A realistic model, obtained by painting a hieroglyph inscription on a papyrus substrate made by the ancient method and using pigments compatible with the Egyptian use, was made for the X-ray investigation. The 259 slices obtained using a tomography were elaborated with original software in order to obtain a virtual result that is quite similar to the hypothetical unrolled sheet.
Note: attached slides are related to an extension of this work, published in the paper: Allegra, D., Ciliberto, E., Ciliberto, P., Petrillo, G., Stanco, F., & Trombatore, C. (2016). X-ray computed tomography for virtually unrolling damaged papyri. Applied Physics A, 122(3), 256.