End-to-end capture
One guided sequence from dark frame to finished cube. Every step — focus, per-band exposure, 16-band capture, flats, calibration — is a designed step, not a script you have to remember.
Cultural heritage imaging
Reveal what time
has hidden.
Shrieve Industries builds imaging software for the study of the past — recovering faded ink, erased text, and hidden structure in manuscripts, documents, and artifacts.
First release
Kairo
Multispectral imaging, end to end.
Kairo is a cross-platform application that carries a heritage object from camera setup to a calibrated spectral image cube. It grows out of MISHA — the multispectral system developed at RIT for documents with overwritten or faded text — and rebuilds the workflow around a single question: how do we make this accessible to the scholars, curators, and conservators who don't run optics labs?
- Guided, end-to-end workflow — noise, focus, per-band exposure, 16-band capture, flats, calibration, cube
- Runs on cameras you already own — USB, industrial, or converted full-spectrum DSLR
- Research-grade output — linear pipeline, ENVI spectral cubes, true-color rendering
- Hardware-free demo mode — learn the entire workflow with synthetic frames
Get Kairo on GitHub
GPL-3.0 · macOS / Windows / Linux
Everyday hardware
Kairo probes every connected camera on launch and picks the right one: any USB camera, industrial sensors such as Pixelink or FLIR Blackfly, or converted full-spectrum DSLRs from Canon, Nikon, and Fujifilm.
Research-grade signal
Frames stay linear end to end — no demosaic, no white balance, no gamma. The result is a calibrated ENVI spectral cube with the dynamic range real scholarship needs.
True color, with provenance
Colorimetric rendering (D65 + CIE 1931), per-band metadata, and saved exposure profiles with every capture — so results are reproducible and defensible.
Fluent on every platform
A clean, native-feeling interface on macOS, Windows, and Linux — with a hardware-free demo mode so the workflow can be learned before the rig ever arrives.
Open by design
Kairo is GPL-3.0. Inspect the pipeline, extend the camera controllers, or point it at hardware we haven't imagined yet.
Who it's for
Built for the people who keep the record.
Museums & galleries
Document objects before treatment, track condition over decades, and share spectral evidence with conservators.
Archives & libraries
Read what was thought unreadable — palimpsests, erased or corrected text, faded and water-damaged documents.
Universities & labs
A reproducible, standards-based capture chain for teaching multispectral methods and running spectral research.
Independent scholars
A complete multispectral system that doesn't require a grant-scale hardware budget or an optics background.
Approach
Low cost. Open. Research-grade.
I
Low cost by design
The expensive part of multispectral imaging has always been the hardware. Kairo is built around converted DSLRs and ordinary cameras — a working system for a fraction of a research-grade rig.
II
Rooted in research
Kairo descends from MISHA, the multispectral imaging system developed at the Rochester Institute of Technology for historical documents with overwritten or faded content. We keep its science and rebuild everything around the person using it.
III
Open source
Released under GPL-3.0. The pipeline is readable, the controllers are extensible, and the method can be taught, checked, and improved by anyone.
IV
Standards-based
ENVI spectral cubes, linear 16-bit data, and complete per-capture metadata — formats that interoperate with the tools scholars already use.
Contact
Talk with us.
We're building partnerships with museums, archives, and labs piloting Kairo. If you work with cultural heritage — or with the hardware of tomorrow — we'd like to hear from you.