Designed in the 1960's for creating relief maps from moon photographs and for other topographical imaging purposes, the VP-8 Image Analyzer is an analog device that converts image density (lights and darks) into vertical relief (shadows and highlights). When applied to photographs made specifically for this type of analysis, the result is an accurate, topographic image showing the correct, natural relief characteristics of the subject. These results are often referred to as "three-dimensional."

In 1976, a group of scientists working on various projects at Los Alamos National Laboratories put a 1931 Enrie photograph of the Shroud of Turin into the VP-8 and discovered that these same three-dimensional properties exist in the Shroud image. This particularly intrigued two of the researchers present at the test, Dr. Eric Jumper and Dr. John Jackson. Stimulated by their startling discovery, they decided to form a research team to investigate what might have formed the image on the cloth and within a few months, the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) was born. Two years later, that same team would perform the first ever, in-depth scientific examination of the Shroud of Turin.

When input to a VP-8, a normal photograph does not result in a properly formed dimensional image but in a rather distorted jumble of light and dark "shapes." That is because the lights and darks of a normal photograph result solely from the amount of light reflected by the subject onto the film. The image densities do not depend on the distance the subject was from the film. Yet the image on the Shroud of Turin yields a very accurate dimensional relief of a human form. One must conclude from this that the image density on the cloth is directly proportionate to the distance it was from the body it covered. In essence, the closer the cloth was to the body (tip of nose, cheekbone, etc.), the darker the image, and the further away (eye sockets, neck, etc.), the fainter the image. This spatial data encoded into the image actually eliminates photography and painting as the possible mechanism for its creation and allows us to conclude that the image was formed while the cloth was draped over an actual human body. So the VP-8 Image Analyzer not only revealed a previously unknown and very important characteristic of the Shroud image, but historically it also provided the actual motivation to form the team that would ultimately go and investigate it.

The animation below shows only a brief sample of the VP-8 "Gain" control being applied to the Shroud facial area. It proves that there was a face of a person on the Shroud, and not an artist's paint or dye. A body pressed against the cloth. However, how the body projected it's image into the cloth remains a mystery to science.

Many attempts to create a forgery similar to the Shroud have been made in order to disprove it's authenticity. Even to this day, modern technology cannot create a forgery of the Shroud of Turin.

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