Digital Rejuvenation of Shanxi Murals

Shanxi is a province renowned for its murals. It preserves over 25,000 square meters of ancient murals — the largest collection of temple and Taoist monastery murals in China — with many pieces being the only surviving examples of their kind nationwide.

However, as most of these murals are located in remote areas, their preservation status is precarious. "Digital scanning and archiving have become an urgent necessity," said Zhao Xin, executive deputy curator of the Shanxi Jinzhiyuan Mural Arts Museum.

Since 2009, with the support of the Shanxi Cultural Relics Bureau, the museum has assembled a professional digitization team and introduced China's first specialized mural scanning equipment to create permanent digital archives for these fragile artworks.

"Acquiring precise data without physically touching the artifacts is a major technical barrier," Zhao explained. The team employs infrared linear scanning technology combined with cold-light illumination, ensuring strictly non-contact scanning.

Before scanning, loose dust must be removed; team members use precision-controlled micro-blowers or suction bulbs tipped with soft cotton cloth to clean the mural surfaces inch by inch with millimeter-level accuracy. Throughout the process, they avoid touching the mural itself, ensuring the paint and base layers remain undisturbed.

Following the scan, the team utilizes post-processing techniques — such as high-precision image stitching, multispectral color correction, and texture mapping — to seamlessly merge thousands of partial images. The result is a digital archive with accurate colors, sharp lines, and clearly discernible details like cracks and mineral grain textures.

Over more than a decade of data collection, the team at the Shanxi Jinzhiyuan Mural Arts Museum has completed high-precision 2D and 3D digitization of murals at sites designated for national and provincial protection, as well as other significant cultural heritage sites. They have established a Shanxi cultural heritage big data center with a storage capacity of 1,000 terabytes (TB). The data for over 10,000 square meters of murals alone accounts for 200 TB — equivalent to the file size of 200,000 4K high-definition movies.

The museum has effectively created "digital doubles" of the murals that will never fade. Zhao added that even in the event of natural disasters or accidental damage, a complete digital counterpart of the original mural remains available, providing a solid foundation for the research, preservation, and revitalization of these cultural treasures.

At the 7th Shanxi Cultural Industries Fair last year, the "digital preservation and revitalization of murals" project by the museum was selected as a finalist case study of the integrated development of culture and technology in Shanxi.

Shanxi is a province renowned for its murals. It preserves over 25,000 square meters of ancient murals — the largest collection of temple and Taoist monastery murals in China — with many pieces being the only surviving examples of their kind nationwide.

However, as most of these murals are located in remote areas, their preservation status is precarious. "Digital scanning and archiving have become an urgent necessity," said Zhao Xin, executive deputy curator of the Shanxi Jinzhiyuan Mural Arts Museum.

Since 2009, with the support of the Shanxi Cultural Relics Bureau, the museum has assembled a professional digitization team and introduced China's first specialized mural scanning equipment to create permanent digital archives for these fragile artworks.

"Acquiring precise data without physically touching the artifacts is a major technical barrier," Zhao explained. The team employs infrared linear scanning technology combined with cold-light illumination, ensuring strictly non-contact scanning.

Before scanning, loose dust must be removed; team members use precision-controlled micro-blowers or suction bulbs tipped with soft cotton cloth to clean the mural surfaces inch by inch with millimeter-level accuracy. Throughout the process, they avoid touching the mural itself, ensuring the paint and base layers remain undisturbed.

Following the scan, the team utilizes post-processing techniques — such as high-precision image stitching, multispectral color correction, and texture mapping — to seamlessly merge thousands of partial images. The result is a digital archive with accurate colors, sharp lines, and clearly discernible details like cracks and mineral grain textures.

Over more than a decade of data collection, the team at the Shanxi Jinzhiyuan Mural Arts Museum has completed high-precision 2D and 3D digitization of murals at sites designated for national and provincial protection, as well as other significant cultural heritage sites. They have established a Shanxi cultural heritage big data center with a storage capacity of 1,000 terabytes (TB). The data for over 10,000 square meters of murals alone accounts for 200 TB — equivalent to the file size of 200,000 4K high-definition movies.

The museum has effectively created "digital doubles" of the murals that will never fade. Zhao added that even in the event of natural disasters or accidental damage, a complete digital counterpart of the original mural remains available, providing a solid foundation for the research, preservation, and revitalization of these cultural treasures.

At the 7th Shanxi Cultural Industries Fair last year, the "digital preservation and revitalization of murals" project by the museum was selected as a finalist case study of the integrated development of culture and technology in Shanxi.

Source: Science and Technology Daily