  After the first recent attempts at virtually opening and reading Herculaneum
papyri, a new enhanced method for virtual unfolding and peeling of ancient
unopened papyrus rolls has been developed. This new algorithms-based and
semi-automatic procedure allowed to investigate with high resolution the 3D
internal structure of two ancient papyrus rolls formerly analysed by X-ray
phase-contrast tomography. Through a new rendering procedure, selected regions
inside the rolls could be identified and isolated and the different sheets
could be peeled one by one virtually, all without damaging these very precious
manuscripts. Subsequently, traces of possible text were identified on the
single sheets. Finally, by applying an additional flattening procedure we
restored for the first time several extensive textual portions of Greek, the
largest ever detected so far in unopened Herculaneum papyrus rolls, with
different degrees of resolution and contrast

Instrumentation and Detectors;Applied Physics