RecoStones: a New Tool to Identify Calabrian Stone Materials Through Image Processing

Abstract

In this work, we present RecoStones, a software tool developed within the SILPI project (acronym of “Sistema per l’Identificazione di Lapidei Per Immagini”) and financed by POR Calabria FESR-FSE 2014–2020. RecoStones is a smartphone app able to classify stone materials and to determine their provenance through image recognition techniques. The app was developed using a set of stone materials sampled from different Calabrian quarries with a particular historical and artistic value, and it was directly tested in situ on different local known materials belonging to monuments and buildings of the Calabrian Cultural Heritage. The testing phase confirmed that RecoStones is a useful, smart, and cheap tool which can help geologists and non-geologists, such as restorers, architects, art historians, engineers, and all the staff involved in restoration and conservation projects, to determine the typology of a stone material and its provenance. This work aims also to create the first database of the Calabrian quarries that may be expanded in the future with further Calabrian outcrops or further quarries located in other national or international contexts. Consequently, the app may be upgraded in order to recognize other stone materials, becoming a new tool of global interest.