An Image Server for the realization of Web Museums

Virtual museums are commonly intended as collections of digital resources containing artistic and cultural images. They can be an appealing enhancement of a museum or can also be accessed by remote hosts (Web Museum). The realization of a virtual museum is based on the collection of large, high resolution and accurate images, that can be managed using an Image Server. This paper propose a new Image Server realizing functionalities such as crop on demand, image filtering, color correction, access management, zooming, metadata management and access control on large and high resolution images. Users of the proposed Image Server may be using a low bandwidth connection (i.e. trough PSTN), thus a main focus of the design is how to deliver high quality images on a low bandwidth channel. The Image Server finally has been tested on the high resolution images acquired from two Pompeian frescoes and a Roman Hypogeum.