The EPR MOUSE

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy is a valuable tool for studying objects with cultural heritage significance, especially paintings as many renaissance era pigments have an EPR signal. Unfortunately, EPR is invasive for all but mm size objects. Although EPR is not destructive of the sample, some heritage conservators consider it destructive of the cultural heritage object as sampling requires removal of a small portion of the object. The EPR mobile universal surface explorer (MOUSE) is a more portable EPR spectrometer useful for noninvasively and nondestructively studying a 3mm diameter region of any size object. With the MOUSE we have identified single, mixed, and layered paramagnetic pigments in paint on canvas, and imaged the distribution of paramagnetic and ferromagnetic pigments on canvas, both on the surface and from underpaintings. This paper summarizes these capabilities, recent hardware developments, such as the scannable unilateral permanent (SUPER) magnet, for the EPR MOUSE.