Quality Assessment Criteria and Methods for 3D Digital Replica of Historical Printing Woodblocks

With the available 3D scanning technologies and the special historical characteristics of printing woodblocks, it is necessary to have concrete methods to assess the visual quality of 3D digital replica for preservation and promotion purposes. In this paper, we present our study for assessing the visual quality of 3D digital replica of historical printing woodblocks. In our study, first, assessment criteria are formed to meet the preservation requirements by consulting with printing woodblock conservationists and assessment methods are developed to assess the quality of 3D digital woodblock replica regarding those criteria. Then, a suitable 3D scanning method is applied to a typical set of printing woodblocks to obtain their 3D digital replicas which are used to evaluate the proposed assessment methods. The experimental results reveal that our proposed assessment criteria and methods can be used to evaluate visual quality of 3D digital woodblock replicas regarding the requirements of preservation and promotion of woodblocks.