Indigo Operations, a division of FLIR Systems, Inc., has teamed with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to develop an ultra high-speed, sixteen channel focal plane array camera that operates in the near-infrared (NIR) region of the electromagnetic spectrum. This science-grade camera can generate over 2,300 frames per second operating with a full-frame spatial resolution of 320 horizontal by 256 vertical pixels and over 22,000 frames per second when windowed to a spatial resolution of 64 by 64 pixels. The camera features FLIR's ISC0207 read-out integrated circuit that provides unique functional modes for the research community such as pixel binning, wavefront sensing, zero dead-time, and external synchronization. The camera employs a standard Camera Link® compatible interface for system control and image acquisition with FLIR's ThermaCAM® RToolsTM software suite. A pre-production version of the high-speed camera will be integrated into the AFRL Directed Energy Directorate's Starfire Optical Range at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, to be used for adaptive optics research.
Infrared cameras are often used to capture high-speed digital video of scenes with enormous ranges in in-band brightness. A simple example of this is a rocket launch, a scene which can consist of a cold rocket hardbody and an extremely hot exhaust plume. It can be next to impossible to fully span a scene like this with the brightness dynamic range of an infrared camera (typically ~12-14 bits) at a single exposure value. The brightest or hottest parts of the image will often be saturated, while at the same time the darkest or coldest parts of the scene may be buried in the noise floor of the camera and appear black in the image. Varying the exposure by adjusting the camera to an optimal shutter speed or integration time is necessary to maximize the useful information recorded by the camera. Sometimes, however, a single integration time is not enough to fully encompass a scene’s brightness (temperature) variations. The technique of superframing gets around this problem by exploiting the capabilities of high frame-rate IR cameras. The technique involves cycling a camera through a set of integration times on a frame-by-frame basis, then combines the resulting “subframes” into single “superframes” with greatly extended dynamic ranges. If the frame rate is sufficiently high, the scene will not change appreciably from one subframe to the next. The technique and some sample data are described in this paper.
Infrared cameras are often used to capture high-speed digital video of scenes with enormous ranges in in-band brightness. A simple example of this would be a man standing next to a hot fire. Under normal operating conditions, it can be next to impossible to fully span a scene like this with the brightness dynamic range of an infrared camera. The brightest or hottest parts of the image will often be saturated, while at the same time the darkest or coldest parts of the scene may be buried in the noise floor of the camera and appear black in the image. Varying the exposure by changing the integration time is necessary to maximize the useful information recorded by the camera, but sometimes a single integration time is not enough to fully encompass a scene's variations. The technique of superframing consists of varying the integration time of the camera from frame to frame in a cyclic manner, then combining the resulting subframes into single superframes with greatly extended dynamic ranges. The technique and some sample data are described in this paper.
Indigo Systems, a division of FLIR Systems, Inc., has released a commercial off-the-shelf, PC-based software program named RPro. RPro, an optional component of Indigo's RTools Radiometric Software Toolkit, was developed for engineers and scientists to efficiently batch process and analyze data from high-end infrared focal plane array cameras, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers, high-speed radiometers, and imaging spectrometers. Many core radiometric calibration and data reduction algorithms already exist within RPro for the user with minimal infrared radiometry experience. For the advanced radiometry engineer, RPro provides a flexible and extensible graphical programming interface to easily develop custom radiometric calibration and data reduction algorithms. Moreover, adding the RPro component to RTools provides the radiometry engineer with the capability to quickly create a data reduction algorithm that when used in conjunction with MODTRAN will correct for atmospheric effects using range supplied time, space, and position information (TSPI). RPro was designed to integrate seamlessly with all other RTools components by utilizing the Standard Archive File (SAF) format maintained by the U.S. Air Force at Arnold Air Force Base, TN.
Indigo Systems Corporation has released a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) PC-based software toolkit named RTools. RTools was developed for engineers and scientists to acquire, radiometrically calibrate, analyze, and document data from most high-end digital infrared (IR) focal plane array (FPA) imaging systems. The RTools software toolkit is comprised of several stand-alone modules including RDac for image acquisition and real-time image analysis, RCal for radiometric and thermographic image calibration, REdit for image file archival and maintenance, and RView for image review, reduction, analysis, and report generation.
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