Albertin, FauziaPeccenini, EvaHwu, YeukuangLee, Tsung-TseOng, Edwin B. L.Je, Jung HoKaplan, FrédéricMargaritondo, GiorgioGabriele Guidi and Roberto Scopigno and Fabio Remondino2016-01-062016-01-062015978-1-5090-0048-7http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/DigitalHeritage.2015.7413825We present x-ray imaging results for diverse ironbased- ink antique writings - single-page manuscripts, stacks and scrolls - from the 16th century on. The objective is to elaborate new digitization techniques by x-ray tomography for the ''Venice Time Machine'' (VTM) project in collaboration with the ''Archivio di Stato''. The technique can potentially read unopened - perhaps unopenable - documents and speed up the entire digitization process of large collections. The technique is feasible thanks to the highly absorbing chemical elements in ancient European ink recipes. The corresponding x-ray contrast allows character reading with reasonably short exposure times. The impact is quite relevant: the potential feasibility of ''softer'' and faster digitization of huge collections like the Archivio di Stato - 80 km of documents spanning 10 centuries.Digitizationancient manuscriptsirongall inksxray tomographyscrollssynchrotron10.1109/DigitalHeritage.2015.7413825