We begin 2024 with some never published material directly related to the Shroud of Turin: microphotographs of the Shroud taken during the summer of 2002.

The six microphotographs in Figure 1 were taken over a bloodstain, on the Shroud of Turin during its restoration in the summer of 2002. They were extracted from one of the many videos taken during that restoration using a camera mounted on a bidirectional track (see Figure 2). That explains a degree of their out-of-focus aspect. Their level of magnification is greater than all the microphotographs taken by Mark Evans during the five-day STURP study in 1978 (see the Mark Evans microphotographs and on the Shroud Scope). This magnification allows us to see more details at the level of the fibrils of the linen threads. For example, the red blood particles clearly agglutinate in very small specks, which is expected from blood. In the collection of Mark Evans, that can be envisioned on only one microphotograph, but cannot be seen at the level of the fibrils (see the ME-06 microphotograph ).

Figure 1. Six microphotographs extracted from one video taken during the restoration of summer 2002. The video camera went over the main bloodstain on the right side of the chest as shown by segment 44 on the left Shroud map of Figure 3d. Kindly provided by Karlheinz Dietz courtesy of Giuseppe Ghiberti (click images for enlargements)

Figure 2. The camera mounted on a bidirectional track. Photograph kindly provided by Karlheinz Dietz. (click the photograph for an enlargement)

The videos are described on pages 133 to 136 in the book Sindone 2002, authored by Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, published in 2002 (see Figure 3 for these four pages). In the appendix on page 133, they are described as Videomicroscopic Photographs of the Shroud (Figure 3a) with a detailed list of the locations on pages 134 and 135 (Figures 3b and 3c), with timing and operators, and on page 136 with two photographs, the recto and verso of the Shroud, showing the locations captured by the videos with numbered line segments (Figure 3d). There are 24 videos from the verso, and 38 videos from the recto, for a total of 62 videos. The microphotographs shown in Figure 1 are from segment 44 on the Shroud map shown on page 136, shown in Figure 3d.

As shown in Figure 3d, on the second map on the right with segments numbered 1 to 24, there are many videos taken on the verso, that is, the underside of the Shroud where there is no image but mostly bloodstains that seeped through the cloth. Microphotographs that would be extracted from them would be unique on that side of the cloth because such microphotographs were never taken before 2002.

3a	3b
3c	3d
Figure 3. Pages describing the videos and their location on the verso and recto of the Shroud. (click images for enlargements)

Naturally, the six microphotographs shown on this web page are not the only microphotographs we could extract from these videos taken in 2002. I had access to only a few minutes of them, although there are around two hours of such videos as compiled on page 135 with the timing of the videos. What other interesting microphotographs that could be extracted is unknown to me, because, as far as I know, the other videos were not analyzed for such microphotographs. They are kept by the authority of the diocese of Turin and are not made accessible. I could not find any good reason why they were never analyzed or used by the authority of Turin for promoting the Shroud. I know that some researchers close to the authority of Turin consider these videos useless, which I think is an incorrect assessment as can be attested by these six microphotographs.

It appears to be such a waste of effort to have done all these videos in 2002 without doing anything with them, not even analyzing them and producing a report. Is it because the Pope does not allow the distribution of such information as the authority of Turin claims? That appears doubtful. It rather appears that the authority of Turin fear that this data could be used in an inappropriate way. But such a fear is unwarranted given that this data tends to show unique details reinforcing the genuine aspect of that cloth as a shroud, and not even close to any artistic rendering.

These videos can be used to go beyond the Mark Evans microphotographs to show many details of the image on the Shroud, such as its superficiality. Other discoveries could be ascertained such as the possible images of blood instead of the expected bloodstains, that is, what appears as bloodstains are probably images of bloodstains. It would also be very interesting to look closely at the microphotographs right next to the radiocarbon dating location. Unfortunately, the authority of Turin does not appear to have any interest of using these videos for such purpose.

There is a similar decision from the diocese of Turin regarding the high-definition photographs of the Shroud. Several years ago, the Italian Haltadefinizione company was contracted by the diocese to scan the Shroud to obtain a high definition image. It was possible to order large printed reproductions of that photograph. The company also developed the application Shroud 2.0 that allowed for visualizing the Shroud at a very high definition on iOS devices. That was similar to the Shroud Scope available on this web site (see Shroud Scope ). That application from Haltadefinizione was sold at a very low price. According to Haltadefinizione, the authority of the diocese of Turin did not renew the contract to sell Shroud 2.0, the production of printed copies of the Shroud, and showing the Shroud on their web site. All the Shroud 2.0 applications already sold became non-functional as it depended on a computer server controlled by Haltadefinizione. Why the authority of Turin decided to discontinue Shroud 2.0 and the sales of printed high-definition photographs by Haltadefinizione? I do not know and my inquiries remained unanswered.