Russian scientists have developed a technology that allows artificial intelligence to extract the contents of fragile scrolls and books without unfolding them. This innovation, created by specialists from the company Smart Engines (SE) and the Federal Research Center "Computer Science and Control" of the Russian Academy of Sciences, will help preserve valuable historical sources and reduce the risk of their damage, SE reported. This is the world's first fully automatic virtual scroll unfolding system that does not require human intervention. The technology allows the recovered text from the manuscript to be obtained at the push of a button. The new development uses a non-destructive method of X-ray tomography and computer vision algorithms to create a digital copy of the document, which is then analyzed. Smart Engines scientists trained the neural network on a data set that includes six samples of rolled documents with letters, numbers, and graphic elements applied. This allows the system to effectively restore text from old paper, birch bark, and silver scrolls, as well as printed books damaged by aging, moisture exposure, or fire. The global scientific community has been trying to solve the problem of analyzing old scrolls using tomography for more than 20 years. Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash Experts note that the global scientific community has been trying to solve the problem of analyzing old scrolls using tomography for more than 20 years, but only now has the process been fully automated. Smart Engines CEO and Doctor of Technical Sciences Vladimir Arlazarov expressed hope that the technology will open up new opportunities for historians, archaeologists, and other specialists in the humanities. The results of the work are expected to be presented in August 2024 at the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR) in Athens, Greece.