It looks like there are two main bottlenecks to reading more: the need for manual intervention in segmenting the scanned scrolls, and the cost in scanning new scrolls.
It looks like there are two main bottlenecks to reading more: the need for manual intervention in segmenting the scanned scrolls, and the cost in scanning new scrolls.
As for segmentation: get some sort of collective solution going, like the Seti@Home did, but for people who are bored as hell, instead of them scrolling Reddit or Twitter all day. Maybe do it like a CAPTCHA so you get it done for free? I'd segment for a few hours a month if I had the ability to do so.
This is a cool project that has taken a community to build to this point, why not try and open and expand the collective of humans working to understand the scrolls? Get millions of people involved and you don't need to rely on technological crutches and development, though that is not the worst way to go either.
If you know anyone that would help chip in for the Phase 2 of the project (scaling up, please let Nat know! (not directly affiliated with the project management team, just pointing to him as a great contact for that.... <3 :')))) ) )
The 2019 scans were done at 7.91 micrometer resolution with 88KeV monochromatic x-rays. Synchrotrons like DLS can also use their uniquely coherent x-rays to do diffraction imaging but I see no evidence they've tried that with Vesuvius scrolls. (Because the object is too thick?)
That scan is 5.5 terabytes of .tif files. The 2023 scan apparently is at 3.24 micrometer resolution and four separate scans of 53/70/88/105KeV each, which should produce a vast, data processing-chokingly wad of data. If all x thousand scrolls need to be scanned at that detail then the Vesuvius Challenge people are going to be juggling a lot of hard drives.