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Central to the challenge were two major hurdles: virtually unrolling the scrolls and making the ink visible. Nader and his team focused on the first problem, enhancing existing algorithms for unrolling the densely packed scrolls. By applying methods like Optical Flow, they achieved a remarkable 10,000-fold improvement in processing efficiency.
The second challenge revolved around the ink itself. The carbon-based ink used in antiquity rendered it nearly invisible against the carbon-based papyrus in CT scans. To address this, Nader's team explored advanced imaging techniques, including infrared imaging, to create a ground truth for training machine-learning models.