According to reports, researchers have developed a unique technology that has an ability to read pages of a closed book with Terahertz frequency profiles. Interestingly, the team members are part of the Indian origin. Moreover, archaeologists will be able to fetch the contents of the antique books without touching them
Under the leadership of Ramesh Raskar from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, researchers had successfully tested a prototype of the proposed system on a stack of papers with one letter printed on it. The system was able to correctly identify the letters on the top nine sheets.
Closed book technology to be used by Metropolitan Museum in New York
Responding to media, Barmak Heshmat, a research scientist at MIT said that the Metropolitan Museum in New York expressed great interest in this new technology. The museum officials will make use of the technology to scan through the pages.
Closed book system adopts Terahertz frequency profiles
The system employs the band of electromagnetic radiation between microwaves and infrared light via Terahertz frequency profiles. This technology has several advantages over other kinds of waves such as X-rays or sound waves. The new frequency profiles will be abler to distinguish between ink and blank paper.
Closed book exploits the loophole
The new closed book reading technology works by exploiting the loophole found between the pages of a book. The important point to note is that the tiny air pockets are trapped about 20 micrometres deep. Moreover, a standard terahertz camera has an ability to emit ultra-short bursts of radiation. The built-in sensor of the camera automatically detects their reflections.
Closed book can detect up to 20 pages
As of writing this, the new system can be used to easily dissect the distance from the camera to the top 20 pages in a stack. However, after nine pages, the reflected signal energy turned out to be too low. Here, the differences between frequency signatures are swamped by extreme noise.
The researchers from MIT and Georgia Institute of Technology in the US developed the algorithms that grab images from individual sheets in stacks of paper. Furthermore, the closed book technology interprets the often distorted or incomplete images as individual letters.