MARBLE PROVENANCE DESIGNATION WITH OBJECT BASED IMAGE ANALYSIS: STATE-OF-THE-ART ROCK FABRIC CHARACTERIZATION FROM PETROGRAPHIC MICROGRAPHS

The designation of marble provenance plays an important role in Cultural History, Archeology and Geosciences in general. In the multidisciplinary approach to explore marble provenance, petrography plays a key role. This paper presents a novel method for automatic image analysis of marble micrographs: Object Based Image Analysis (OBIA), via the incorporation of petrographic expert knowledge, enables the reliable extraction of mineral grains and yields a wealth of quantitative shape and texture measures. A work flow is introduced for extracting mineral shape characteristics from marble micrographs, comprising data acquisition, pre-processing and Object Based Image Analysis. Therefore verifiable parameters and analysis supply marble provenance research particularly for multiple sample analysis in an efficient and timely manner.