REGION OF INTEREST STUDY USING THE VP8 IMAGE ANALYZER:
ISOMETRIC PROJECTION (3D) AND LEVEL SLICING FUNCTIONS
FOR DR. PETRUS SOONS
BY DEACON Pete Schumacher
@ 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, SCHUMACHER AND SOONS

The VP8 Image Analyzer performs two major, separate functions. One function is to make XYZ plots of image brightness on an oscilloscope-like monitor. The other function is to present false-color representations of selected brightness ranges (spans of brightness) on a color video monitor.

The XYZ plot of image brightness, referred to as an “Isometric Display” shows a relief map of image brightness variations. Normally, brightness has nothing to do with height or depth. The VP8 plots are simply graphic representations of changes in image brightness over an entire image. The image is viewed through a video camera. The camera is connected to the input of the VP8. The VP8 is an analog computer. The processor creates the display in real time. The process is “hard wired” so the VP8 can only “perform” the process. It cannot alter the image, edit portions of the image, or “recall, store, or remember” the image, and it cannot store the display or the results of the VP8 process.

It is important to note that the VP8 display of 3D in reference to the Shroud of Turin image is not “perfect” in that there are distortions caused by the weave of the cloth, by water stains and other stains on the Shroud, and by some of the other unique characteristics of the Shroud image, including its X-ray like properties.
The Level Slice process is used to create color-assigned references to selectable ranges in brightness within an image. There are eight adjustable brightness level range settings. A color is assigned to each range, or “band of brightness”. While viewing the image being processed, each color band is adjusted to highlight areas of the image, or objects within the image which have a common brightness. This is a very simple, basic means for classification of objects within images. Accuracy of object classification relies heavily on the image quality and type, and the characteristic brightness and contrast of objects imaged. For example: A range of brightness can be selected to include objects brighter than 250 but darker than 391, on a scale of 000 to 1500, wherein 000 is the darkest possible brightness (black) within the image and 1500 is the brightest possible brightness (white) within the image.

All objects or image areas falling in the range of 250 to 391 could be selected for display in the color green. All other display of brightness bands could either be turned “off” completely (black or grey or white, but not of any color), or “on” at some intensity of display color, for the color assigned to each other band. Thus, a range in brightness of 250 to 391 within an image of a farming area might represent the wheat crops, as opposed to other crops within the area imaged. When considering the Shroud of Turin image, the level slices might represent different features on the Shroud, such as blood stains, burn marks, scourge marks, or such features as may exist on the Shroud.

Of particular interest to Dr. Soons, is the area just below the chin area in the frontal image. Using brightness mapping, it is apparent that there is some basic shift in brightness across the image in this area of the Shroud. Further analysis suggests there might be some type of object at that location on the Shroud. Level slicing suggests there is an object at this location on the Shroud image too. With the Level Slice function the detail of this area can be examined more closely in terms of “inclusion” or “exclusion” from the various brightness groupings and colors assigned to them.
This basic classification of the image in this area of the Shroud produces results suggesting there is some object, or objects, at the location of interest (region of interest, ROI) defined by Dr. Soons. Level Slice studies further suggest the probability of some detailed patterns within the object within the ROI. Further analysis of the spectral characteristics over the ROI could yield further classification and grouping of patterns for “inclusion” or “exclusion” from these basic classifications, and should be performed before making conclusions concerning any potential objects or pattern details within the ROI. The VP8 is not capable of performing color-based-analysis of an image, short of using monochrome spectral filters in conjunction with the camera to isolate different color spectra.
While some tests were performed using broadband primary color filters, no significant variation in Level Slicing was noticed. Tests should be performed using very narrow band spectral filters, or other means of isolating spectral values within the ROI in order to sharpen the classification of the analysis.

CONCLUSIONS:
Using minimal classification image processing techniques involving isometric projection and Level Slicing functions of the VP8 Image Analyzer we were able to assess the region of interest ROI defined by Dr. Soons. It is apparent that some object, having some pattern detail within that object, resides within the defined ROI.
See the photos D, E, F and G: these are 4 photos from a complete series with results from the Level Slicing function, showing clearly the outline of a solid object under the beard in the neck area.

Photo D                                                                                           Photo E

Photo F                                                                                          Photo G

4 photos from a series with results from Level Slicing function, and that clearly show the outline of some solid object with relief on the surface

Tests were performed over a period of seven days, using a backlit, full-size color transparency (Barrie Schwortz @ 1978). Tests were performed at the Shroud Exhibit And Museum, Inc, facilities in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Ambient lighting was tightly controlled, and uniform illumination of the scene was verified prior to the analysis and following the analysis. A Cohu Electronics Division camera model 4910 series CCD monochrome instrumentation camera setup for photometric analysis was used. The camera field flatness and uniform response to brightness were verified before and after the study. The VP8 Image Analyzer was used to perform these camera property verifications.
Photo 2: shows the fascimil of the Shroud (Barrie Schwortz) used for the research
Photo 10: Pete Schumacher working with VP8 Image Analyzer
Photo 11: Set-up for the research with controlled lighting
Photo 12: Schumacher in front of fascimil with research set-up

Photo 2                                                                                     Photo 10

Photo 11                                                  Photo 12

Schumacher could not define or recognize the object located within the ROI and he could not identify the object or any of the patterning within the object either as viewed directly or as enhanced through the processes of the VP8 Image Analyzer employed.
He was, however, able to confirm the presence of the image outline of an object within the ROI.

Following are two DVD’s with the results of the research:

1) 6.3.3. called; PETE SEAM VP8 Color Slice for Petrus
ROI SOLID OBJECT
Shows image in the VP8 Image Analyzer with under the beard a well visible outline of the Solid Object.

6.3.3 PETE SEAM VP8 Color Slice for Petrus ROI SOLID OBJECT

2) 6.3.4. called: PETE DVD VP8 SEAM 3D SOLID OBJECT rotation June 2010 VP8
This DVD shows the Level Slicing functions of the research. The face is on the left side in a horizontal position and the solid object in the middle of the screen, clearly visible.

6.3.4 PETE DVD VP8 SEAM 3D SOLID OBJECT rotation june 2010 VP 8

AVINOAM DANIN HELMET OF THORNS

Photo 1. Different thorns in Italy

Photo 2. Copy helmet of thorns and thorns Italy

In monasteries and churches in Europe there are many thorn relics, supposedly from the Crown of Thorns reported in the Scripture. Fleury (1870) studied the nature of these thorn relics in the 1800’s, since they were brought in early times from the Holy Land. In his book he showed thorns of Ziziphus spina-christi, and Rhamnus lycioides (see photographs 8 and 9).

Photo 8. Ziziphus spina-christi

Photo 9. Rhamnus lycioides

As we found images of both species on the Shroud, it seems interesting to try to link the two sources of information reaching us from early times through plant parts and through their images. Since we do not see any conflict between the botanical information seen on the Shroud and the assumptions made by Fleury, we used his drawing of the Crown of Thorns (or Helmet of Thorns) as a model for the preparation of an important object, produced by Ms. Michal Raz for the permanent expositions of the Shroud in Jerusalem and in Rome.

Photo 3. Fleury drawing helmet of thorns

Photo 4. Copy of helmet of thorns made in Israel

Photo 5. Helmet of thorns in exposition Sacramento

Peter Soons and I participated in the Ohio Conference on Shroud Research in 2008 and presented our lectures there, and I suddenly heard him saying something about a “Helmet of Thorns” and not a “Crown of Thorns”. After the lecture I asked Peter to repeat and explain his statement. He told me that when he created the life-size holograms of the front and the back of the body and installed them in the Regina Apostolorum exhibition of the Shroud in Rome, they had to take a ladder to see the top of the head. This part of the body of the Man on the Shroud had not been seen in 3D by anybody before. Peter than saw that there were many small wounds that had been bleeding on the top of the head. When looking at the forehead and the hair in regular photographs, nobody could see the small wounds. The conclusion was that the Man of the Shroud was tortured with a “Helmet of Thorns” as postulated by Fleury in 1870. You can understand now how happy I was that I convinced Father Hector Guerra and Dr. Ferre to add the helmet of thorns, made by Michal Raz following Fleury’s model, to the permanent exhibitions of the Shroud in Jerusalem and in Rome. Ms. Michal Raz from Kibbutz En Gedi knew very well how to reproduce such a “helmet” from Rhamnus lycioides and Ziziphus spina-christi thorny stems. (photos 8 and 9 see above)

The “crown” part of the “helmet of thorns” is in the Saint Chapelle of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and was bought by King Philip from the Byzantine Emperor in the 12th century and could well be the original lower part of the “helmet of thorns”. (See photographs 6 and 7).

Photo 6

Photo 7

Crown part in Notre Dame Paris

IMAGELESS AREAS IN THE 3D-IMAGE OF THE BODY ON THE SHROUD

PROF. AVINOAM DANIN BOTANIST, Dr. PETRUS SOONS

Photo 2A. Holes on sides of face and forehead. ANAGLYPH (use 3D glasses)

In 2005-2007 during the conversion-work of Bernardo Galmarini and the Dutch Holographic Laboratory in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, it became obvious that, although the image of the Man on the Shroud was anatomically correct, there were image-less areas in the grayscale of the body. When the 3D formed on the Z-axis (on the computer screen in the direction of the viewer), these image-less areas showed up as “holes”, because they did not contain the body-to-cloth distance information (3D) that characterizes the rest of the image.

Photo 1. Alan and Mary Whanger Ohio

Thanks to the investigations of ALAN ADLER we knew that under the blood on the cloth there is no image, and the individual fibers are white and not discolored. So it seems that the presence of the blood prevented the image formation of the body in these particular areas of the Shroud. Having this in mind we tried to find a solution of parts of the image-less areas that showed up as “holes”, and I remembered the book of MARY and ALAN WHANGER, “The Shroud of Turin, An Adventure of Discovery” (1998), where in chapter 7, “Flower Images” on page 73, Alan showed two photographs with flowers on the face and around the lower parts of the arms and the hands. When I compared these photographs with our findings, it occurred to me that they covered part of the “holes” that we had encountered during the conversion of 2D to 3D of the image. Alan later told me that these photographs showed the findings of Prof. AVINOAM DANIN (Hebrew University- Jerusalem, Israel) of flowers on and near the face and the area around the arms and hands. During a visit to Israel in October of 2007 I met Avinoam Danin and I invited him to come with me to Raleigh, North Carolina where TOM D’MUHALA lives and he was in the possession of the collection of all the photographs of VERNON MILLER, made during the STURP investigations of 1978, were Vernon was the chief technical photographer. Tom D’Muhala contacted Vernon Miller and he agreed to make a series of the photographs, including Ultra-Violet photographs, available to Avinoam Danin, so he would be able to do more research on the Botany of the Shroud.

Photo 2. Tom D’Muhala with wife and Father Guerra Raleigh

That resulted not only in a confirmation of the previous findings of Avinoam Danin in the ENRIE photographs, but he even found additional images of flowers. This also solved the problem of the “holes” in the face and the area around the arms and hands.
Like the blood images we mentioned before, it seems also that the presence of flowers and plants on certain areas of the body, prevented the formation of the image of the underlying body areas. Whatever “energy” formed the image, it seemingly could not penetrate solid objects like the blood and the flowers.

I will quote now from the book of AVINOAM DANIN: “Botany of the SHROUD, The Story of Floral Images on the Shroud of Turin” (Danin Publishing 2009, Jerusalem), to show the Botanical findings that he did in 2007-2008 on these new photographic materials (pages 60-62).
Quote: “I started corresponding by e-mail with Dr. Petrus Soons, who was responsible for the creation of these holograms with his collaborators in the Dutch Holographic Laboratory. When he visited Jerusalem in October 2007, we set up a meeting and he explained his 3D studies to me.
During the conversion process, Galmarini the 3D specialist from Argentina, noticed in the greyscale of the image, that in the face, and also in certain parts of the body, there are areas where no image is visible at all. In the 3D conversion these areas show up as “holes”. This confused him and he contacted Dr. Soons about the matter. Dr. Soons remembered some photographs he had seen in the book by the Whangers. These photographs showed my findings of flowers on and near the face and the area around the arms and hands. When he studied these images and compared them with the “holes” he had found on the face, he concluded that these two coincided.

Dr. Soons then invited me to join him in November 2007 to go to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was going to carry out investigations on the Ultra-Violet photographs that had been made in 1978 by Vernon Miller, the professional technical photographer of the STURP team, when they did the research on the Shroud of Turin.
Until then, my studies had been done on second generation copies of the photographs made by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931, which gave rise to some criticism.
After studying Vernon Miller’s UV photographs, which are of excellent quality, I came to the conclusion, that they not only confirmed all my previous findings in the Enrie photographs, but I even found additional images of flowers.
This finding proves that these plant and flower images really exist and are not artifacts in the linen caused by the special orthochromatic glass plates used by Enrie in 1931. (or pareidolia!).
On the first of March 2008, Dr. Petrus Soons sent me digitazations and enlargements of the Miller UV photographs of the face and body, and I studied them carefully. I came to the conclusion that on the anatomical right side of the face between the hair and the face proper, and also on the forehead and the left side of the face of the Man on the Shroud, there is an almost continuous carpet of flowers (see Fig. 65). The “flowers” are most similar in shape and size to flowering heads of Matricaria recutita or Anthemis bornmuelleri (see Fig. 66). I put the living flowering heads on an earlier stage of preparing Fig. 66. At the center of each “flower” there are yellow tubular florets, whereas at the periphery there is one circle of white ligulate florets (Fig. 67). While laying the “flowers” of Anthemis bornmuelleri on the left side of Fig. 66, I had to cut their peduncles. This action indicates, that when these “flowers” were placed, it was not a random throwing of flowers but an orderly arrangement. More than 300 flowering heads were used. The species of the plant used cannot be determined. There are dozens of Anthemis species in the East Mediterranean area that differ in the morphology of their minute fruits. However, the closest representatives were used to make the model displayed in Fig. 66. Since I am dealing only with botanical findings, I cannot evaluate the reasons for putting these flowers on the head area.

Photo 3. Figure 65 Photo Vernon Miller, Holes face

Photo 4. Figure 66 Imageless area covered with Anthemis bornmuellerii

Photo 5. Figure 67 Anthemis bornmuellerii

Photo 6. Springtime field with Anthemis

Photo 7. Bouquets of flowers around arms and hands covering imageless areas

It was obvious, that the conclusion of Dr. Petrus Soons, that there were flowers on the side of the face, forehead and around the arms and hands that had blocked the image formation and showed up as “HOLES” in the 3D conversion, was right and we had been able to prove his conclusions.

Photo 8. Avinoam Danin and Dr. Soons in Ohio

Petrus Soons and I participated in the Ohio Conference on Shroud Research in 2008 and presented our lectures there. Then we went to St. Louis, Missouri, where we presented our lectures in the large hall at the Visitor Center of the Botanical Garden. Our lectures were transmitted synchronically via an educational television channel. While listening to Dr. Soons’s lecture, I suddenly heard him saying something about a “helmet of thorns” and not a “crown of thorns”. After the lecture, as we watched lightning bugs marking their way in the night air of the fantastic Garden, I asked Peter to repeat and explain his statement. He told me that when he created the life-size holograms of the front and the back of the body and displayed them in the Regina Apostolorum in Rome, they had to take a ladder to see the top of the head.
This part of the body of the Man on the Shroud had not been seen in 3D by anybody before. Peter then saw that there were many small wounds on the top of the head that had been bleeding. When looking at the forehead and the hair on the photographs, nobody could see the small wounds. The conclusion was that the Man of the Shroud was tortured with a “helmet of thorns” as postulated already by Fleury (1870). You can understand now how happy I was that I convinced Father Hector Guerra L.C. and Dr. Ferre to add the “Helmet of Thorns”, made by Michal Raz in Israel, following Fleury’s model, to the permanent expositions of the Shroud in Jerusalem and Rome. (See article 6.13 HELMET OF THORNS)

Photo 9. Helmet of thorns made in Israel

Photo 10. Fleury Helmet of thorns

THE CONCLUSIONS FROM OUR BOTANICAL FINDINGS ARE:

1) Observing the images of plants in the same locations on photographs produced by different photographic techniques and on the linen of the Shroud itself, proves that they are real and not artifacts created by one photographic method or another.
2) The area where the assemblage of the three indicator plants could be freshly collected and placed on the Shroud near the man’s body, is the area of Jerusalem to Hebron.
3) March-April is the time of the year when the whole assemblage of some ten of the plants identified on the Shroud is in bloom.
4) Ferocious thorns of two trees were found near the man’s head and a reed was laid alongside his body.
5) The synchronization of the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo demonstrates that the Shroud of Turin already existed in the 8-th century A.D. High similarity of the face of the Man of the Shroud to an icon of “The Pantocrater” in the St. Catherine Monastery, Sinai, takes the Shroud back to 550 A.D.
6) Special attention was given to the covering of parts of the head of the Man on the Shroud with daisy-like flowers after their carrying stalks were removed.

EPILOGUE:

Throughout my years of investigations of the Shroud, I had the pleasure of knowing interesting people and expanding my fields of interest. I lost many hours of sleep as thoughts about the meaning of my findings kept me awake at the oddest hours. I am often asked about my personal feelings concerning the Shroud and what surrounds it. I appreciate the belief of Christians around the world and I admire the expression: “live and let live”. I have gathered much botanical information in my years of research and am happy to share my expertise and its application in Sindonology with those who are interested.

The possibility of the presence of coins over the eyes was first raised, when three scientists, John P. Jackson, Eric J. Jumper and R.W. (Bill) Mottern, the instigators of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project, put a photograph of the Shroud face in a VP-8 Image Analyzer, and saw, to their astonishment, an accurate three-dimensional representation rather than the irregular and distorted image resulting from all ordinary photographs and paintings. Two button-like objects, one over each eye, were visible; it was suggested they might be coins which had been used to keep the eyes of the dead closed, a practice common to many peoples for many centuries. British historian Ian Wilson mentioned several coins from the time of Pontius Pilate which would correspond to the size of the “buttons”, about fifteen millimeters or five-eighths of an inch in diameter.

Photo 2. Lepton with Sheperd´s crook

Father Filas did a lot of research on the presence of these coins. He noticed something that he had not seen before, a sort of design directly over the right eye, four curving capital letters, and also something that looked like a shepherd’s crook. He identified the one over the right eye definitely as a lituus of Pontius Pilate and the one over the left eye as a Pontius Pilate lepton known as the JOULIA (Julia) which was struck only during a sixth-month period in A.D. 29 in honor of the mother of Tiberias Caesar.

Photo 4. Front and back of lepton with Sheperd´s crook from Soons collection

These findings received a mixed reaction; while some accepted them as at least possible, others met them with derision, also because the letters had a misspelling. Later, Father Filas found in numismatic shops several leptons with the same misspelling.

Alan and Mary Whanger decided to do research on these coins with their Polarized Image Overlay Technique and that revealed seventy-four points of congruence (PC) between the image on the right eye of the Shroud and Filas’s lituus lepton, and seventy-three PC between the left eye image and the Joulia lepton. Remember, in a court of law it takes only fourteen PC to establish the same source of fingerprints. These coins are much smaller than a fingerprint. Some of Fila’s coins, show a clipped edge on one side that matche a clipped edge on the Shroud image.

These coins were crudely designed and crudely struck. They were made from cast bronze bars of coin blanks into which the design was hammered and then the coin was cut from the bar, leaving a flat or clipped edge on one side. The iron dies would last only for perhaps a thousand or two thousand coins and then would deform or break and a new die would have to be made. Hence there are countless variations of the same design, many misspellings, and many variations of position.

Photo 3. Cast bronze bar for production leptons

The images were probably formed by corona discharge, where ionizing electrical energy first spreads over the surface of any object in the electrical field, whatever it may be-flesh, hair. cloth, leather, metal etc. The sparks or ions then tend to be discharged as streamers which may be two inches or more in length, and they are discharged from irregular or elevated areas rather than from smooth surfaces.

Photo 5. Positive photograph face with outline of two coins           Photo 6. Anaglyph photograph face with coins

On the photographs you can see the “coins” over the eyes. In the photographs of the VP-8 Image Analyzer they are rather obvious. We were not able to see the details during our investigations, but the VP-8 Image Analyzer shows clearly, 3D, almost round objects on top of the left and right eyelids.

Photo 7. VP-8 Image Analyzer with on eyelids in vertical relief round objects