The Old Books New Science Lab at the University of Toronto is using a medical-style CT scanner and a multicolor light imager to bring out details the naked eye can’t see in centuries-old books and documents, CBC Arts reported Nov. 3.The lab, which began in 2014, works with the university’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and invites researchers and PhD students to use its equipment. Micro-CT, short for micro-computed tomography, takes many X-ray images of an object and assembles them into a 3D picture of its inside, said Jessica Lockhart, the lab’s head of research.The second tool, a scanner called MISHA, photographs an object under 16 wavelength bands, or slices of the light spectrum, including ultraviolet, according to CBC. Software then lets researchers flip through the images to find ink and images that are invisible in normal light.What the scans have shownA 2019 micro-CT scan of a Book of Hours, a type of prayer book, made with University of Toronto researchers exposed four rows of holes along its spine from an earlier binding, according to a university exhibit page.Reporter David Silverberg was not allowed to handle a mouse-sized clay tablet he described as Babylonian. Lockhart said the team used a micro-CT scan to create a 3D image that enlarges its text so researchers can try to translate it. The reading so far suggests a deed of sale between two houses, according to CBC Arts.CBC said the Andrews Project in Book Science, run with the Thomas Fisher library and the university’s Yip Lab, has scanned a World War I soldier’s last letter, which concealed a pressed flower. In the past, a university team using MISHA imaging helped identify the bloom in Harold Wrong’s last letter home as a blue cowslip.Rachel Di Cresce, a special collections librarian for book science at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, said researchers there have “a lot of different toys to play with.”Wider work and open questionsThe lab’s Hidden Stories project, listed on its website as running from 2022 to 2026 with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the university’s libraries. CBC said it studies the physical and biological makeup of manuscripts to learn about the people behind them.Multispectral imaging, the technique behind MISHA, has turned up hidden text elsewhere, too. Researchers at the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi used it to read verses beneath gold leaf on a page of the Blue Quran.When the reporter watched MISHA scan a 14-th century Chinese bank note, its layers showed two blocky images that researchers are still trying to interpret, CBC said. CBC‘s piece is a feature built on a lab visit and interviews. It cites no published study or outside expert, and the tablet’s reading remains preliminary.Next, the lab will study documents from 1940s wartime Ukraine, found in a milk can buried on the Polish-Ukrainian border and now held at the university, according to CBC.