Laboratory Instrumentation

In this chapter, we will describe several analysis and imaging techniques that are not (yet) compact enough to be transportable to the artwork, but instead require the artwork to travel to the respective instruments. Section 1 describes a microspectrofluorimetry technique that can map both absorption and emission spectra with high spatial and spectral resolution. Section 2 adds another layer of information by imaging time-resolved emission and the scaling of emission as a function of excitation fluence. Section 3 extends the hyperspectral techniques from the first two sections to wavelength ranges not accessible with conventional lasers by utilizing synchrotron emission as an excitation source. Section 4 introduces nonlinear optical interactions to improve the achievable imaging depth, spatial resolution, and accessible fluorescent targets in artworks. Finally, Sect. 5 extends the nonlinear optical interactions beyond fluorescent molecules, which vastly increases the range of pigments accessible for imaging.