A radiation sensing technology called Timepix was first created for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and then transitioned to the ESA for off-Earth missions. Its next career move, however, is analyzing artworks to sift out which are real, and which are fakes.
“The art market is a jungle—some say that around 50 percent of art pieces and paintings are either fakes or are incorrectly attributed,” says Josef Uher, chief technology officer of Czech company InsightART. “This has huge consequences for the value of such artworks.”
Timepix harnesses a silicon sensor that’s 256 x 256 pixels, and those pixels are small, about the half the thickness of a human hair at 55 micrometers square. An important factor in achieving Timepix’s high level of detail, according to the ESA, is that each pixel processes radiation and transmits signals independently.
Transitioning this tech to the art world, “A standard X-ray of a painting can show underlying detail hidden by the top layer of paint. InsightART’s Timepix-based sensing device can ‘expose’ every individual pigment separately. Each pigment can be assigned a color to help with visual analysis, and a filtering process can show only brush strokes made with a specific pigment, such as lead paint,” according to the ESA.
Based on the materials used and the painting’s underlying image, experts can determine if the date associated with the painting, and the ascribed artist’s style, are consistent with the findings.
During Timepix’s CERN days, it took 3D views of charged particle tracks. It lent those similar services to space applications, riding aboard on the International Space Station (ISS) since 2012, and joining the ESA’s Proba-V satellite on the SATRAM instrument in 2015.