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Abstract:
Domain of handwriting in the Arabic script presents unique
technical challenges and has been addressed more recently than other domains.
There are hundreds of thousands of rare Arabic documents and old manuscripts
in libraries, museums, and private collections in the state of Qatar. A rich
archival heritage of Arab world and Qatar are preserved in the Qatar National
Library (QNL) and the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha. It is estimated
that about seven million rare manuscripts documenting the contributions of the
Arab Islamic civilization in Astronomy, Medicine, Mathematics, Science,
Engineering, Art, Religion, Philosophy, etc. still survive in libraries, museums,
and private collections around the world. The goal of this research project is
the development of techniques and tools for the classification, investigation,
and analysis of such sources to support paleography studies by automatically
deriving the writer, date, and geographic location of the relevant scripts.
Furthermore, true physical image degradation modeling, which includes
stochastic processes, will be developed to model the degradation phenomena
and other characteristics of these documents (e.g. creation, age). Therefore, the
general objectives is to plan, analyze, design, build, and test a novel
classification algorithms and tools to support Paleography Analysis of
historical Arabic manuscripts. Considering a true fiber network for paper we
will use the Boltzmann lattice method for obtaining the ink distribution. We
will develop a data-driven pattern analysis method that learns enhancement
and restoration models for the collection under study, with the autonomous
authority to validate the adapted model with less reliance on reference data and
expert feedback
Team
: Lead PI:Dr. Somaya Al-Maadeed,
Co-PI:Dr. Sherine Al-Menshawy
PI:Prof. Ahmed Bouridane,
PI:Prof. Mohamed Cheriet
Intelligent System to Digitally Support Paleographic
Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts in Qatar
Department Research
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