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What is the VP-8 Image Analyzer and what is its significance?
In 1976, research physicists John Jackson and Eric Jumper along with Kenneth Stevenson, Giles Charter, and Peter Shumacher, examined a photograph of the Shroud in the Interpretation Systems VP-8 Image Analyzer at the Sandia Scientific Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. To their complete surprise it produced a 3D image. The photograph of the Shroud, unlike any photograph of a drawing or painting, seemed to be "dimensionally encoded."
A normal black and white photograph (or monochrome photograph of any single color) is an image of varying amounts of reflected light. Light colored surfaces approach white and dark surfaces tend towards black. The Shroud, however, is a "graph" of proximity of the fabric to the body. At the same time, it acts like a photographic negative. Closeness appears darker (a scorched-linen color) and distance is lighter. The tip of the nose is dark because it was close to or touching the linen at the time the image was formed. The recesses of the eyes, being farther away, are lighter. Some dark areas on the Shroud are not part of the image but actually blood stains. These are particularly noticeable on the forehead in the above picture.
Peter Shumacher, an developer of the NASA VP-8 Image Analyzer, describes the discovery of the 3D image. He had has just finished installing a system for Dr. John Jackson of the Sandia Scientific Laboratories:
Jackson placed an image of the Shroud of Turin onto the light table of the system. He focused the video camera of the system on the image. When the pseudo-three-dimensional image display ("isometric display") was activated, a "true-three-dimensional image" appeared on the monitor. At least, there were main traits of real three-dimensional structuring in the image displayed. The nose ramped in relief. The facial features were contoured properly. Body shapes of the arms, legs, and chest, had the basic human form. The result from the VP-8 had never occurred with any of the images I had studied, nor had I heard of it happening during any image studies done by others
I had never heard of the Shroud of Turin before that moment. I had no idea what I was looking at. However, the results were unlike anything I have processed through the VP-8 Analyzer, before or since. Only the Shroud of Turin has produced these results from a VP-8 Image Analyzer isometric projection study. .
The late Dr. Alan D. Adler, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Western Connecticut University, in an article entitled, “The Nature of the Body Images on the Shroud of Turin,” explains it this way:
However, the most interesting characteristic of the images is revealed by computer imaging analysis, particularly that done by a VP-8 image analyzer. The body image contains realistic 3-dimensional information relating image density at any particular pixel point to the distance between the cloth and the body at that point. Further, this projective information transfer can be shown to be collimated and anisotropic, neither necessarily orthogonal to the receiving or sending surface. Note, no image appears between the two body image heads as would be consistent with this point. Although we do not have any confirmed explanation for this property, it has been used to test a number of artistic rendition methods and they have all failed to meet this criterion. These methods include albedo (simple reflection as in an ordinary photograph) images from a bust, phosphorescent emission images from this same bust, artistic sketches and paintings of various types, chemical contact images, thermal images, diffusion images, bas reliefs, dry powder contact images, scorching contact with an engraving, and various hybrid mechanisms. These conclusions are in agreement with those earlier reached by a comparison of possible formation mechanisms with the observed scientific data and interestingly enough with many of those ruled out by Vignon in his pioneering studies. It is also of interest to note that starting with artistic criteria, rather than scientific, it can be demonstrated that the Shroud is not a painting.
See: What do we mean when we say the image has 3D qualities?
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© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York
