Prof. Johann A. Briffa and Dr Marc Tanti, from the Department of Communications & Computer Engineering, have recently visited the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. This meeting forms part of a project called Automated Segmentation of Microtomography Imaging (ASEMI), whose partners are the University of Malta and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, and which has received funding from the ATTRACT project funded by the European Commission.
During the visit, Prof. Briffa and Dr Tanti have received training on manually segmenting high-resolution 3D X-rays of animal mummies, a laborious task to identify and mark the different parts of the mummy. In this case, the objective is to separate the bones, soft tissue, textiles, and other components. Once the various components are labelled, it becomes possible to view the separate components in 3D, allowing archaeologists to study the mummy without damaging it.
The UM contribution to this project involves the development of artificial intelligence algorithms to automate the segmentation process. This would considerably reduce the time it takes to obtain a segmented image, making it possible to analyse more specimens.
In addition to Prof. Briffa and Dr Tanti, the UM team also includes Prof. Adrian Muscat, Dr Ing. Reuben Farrugia, Dr Kenneth Scerri, and Dr Ing. Gianluca Valentino from the Data Science Research Platform.