Cyclododecane as opacifier for digitalization of archaeological glass

This paper faces the problem of acquiring archaeological artifacts using triangulation based 3D laser scanners and focusing on reflective/refractive surfaces. This kind of artifacts are mostly made of glass or polished metal, and the properties of their surfaces violate most of the fundamental assumptions made by vision algorithms. Also, the unique and fragile nature of archaeological artifacts adds an extra constraint to the acquisition process: the use of industrial whitening sprays has to be avoided, due to the physicochemical processes required to clean the surface after scanning and because the chemical properties of these sprays may damage the original object. As an alternative to them, a new way to use a common conservation material is proposed: the use of cyclododecane as a whitening spray. Thanks to its chemical stability and to the fact that it sublimes at room temperature, together with its good film-forming capabilities, a set of evaluation tests is presented to prove that the error introduced by the opaque thin layer created on the surface of the artifact is smaller than the accuracy of the 3D scanner and, thus, no acquisition errors are introduced. A comparison with general-purpose industrial whitening sprays is also presented, and achieved results show no significant differences in the quality of the resulting 3D models.