A new artwork restoration tool has restored a centuries-old painting in hours by placing a digitally-constructed mask, printed onto a thin, color-accurate polymer film, over areas that need restoration work. The process is quicker than conventional manual restoration and is reversible.

The system was created by Alex Kachkine, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and was tested on a highly damaged 15th-century painting.  5,612 separate regions requiring repair were identified and filled in using 57,314 different colours. The entire process took just 3.5 hours, compared to months for a traditional restoration.