Artificial intelligence for cultural heritage: digital image processing-based techniques and research challenges

Digital image processing and analysis play a crucial role in processing and interpreting visual data, enabling significant advancements in computer vision, pattern recognition, and various technological applications. Image processing has also helped the area of cultural heritage as it has emerged as a transformative tool, offering innovative solutions for preserving, documenting, and promoting cultural heritage. Cultural heritage encompasses the tangible and intangible expressions of a society's history, and values for maintaining identity, and inspiring future generations. In the research domain of cultural heritage, this systematic literature review explores the digital image processing and analysis techniques for cultural heritage, focusing on their applications in image segmentation, object detection, digitisation, restoration, and enhancing image qualities of various cultural artefacts. The review examines the datasets commonly used in these fields. We have discussed the various applications of AI along with open research challenges which may serve as future research directions. By exploring these trends, the study provides insights into how AI technologies can contribute to the sustainable and responsible preservation of cultural heritage for future generations.