Infrared Imaging Radiometry

Level: Advanced Length: 7 hours Format: In-Person Lecture Intended Audience: This material is intended for engineers, scientists, graduate students and range technicians that are working with science-grade infrared cameras in the lab, on military test ranges, or similar situations. Description: This course will enable the user to understand how an infrared camera system can be calibrated to measure radiance, radiant intensity and apparent temperatures of targets and scenes, and how the camera’s digital data is converted into radiometric data. The user will learn how to perform their own external, "by hand" calibrations on a science-grade infrared camera system using area or cavity blackbodies and an Excel spreadsheet provided by the instructor. The influences of lenses, ND and bandpass filters, windows, emissivity, reflections and atmospheric absorption on the system calibration will be covered. The instructor will use software to illustrate these concepts and will show how to measure emissivity using an infrared camera and how to predict system performance outside the calibration range. Learning Outcomes: This course will enable you to: - describe infrared camera transfer functions - electrical signal output versus radiance signal input - convert raw data to radiometric data, and convert radiometric data to temperatures - perform radiometric calibration of camera systems using cavity and area blackbodies - classify the measurement units of radiometry and thermography - measure target emissivity and calibrate emissivity into the system - assess effects of ND filters and bandpass filters on calibrations, and calculate which ND warm filter you need for a given temperature range of target - determine which cameras, lenses and both cold and warm filters to select for your application - gauge and account for reflections and atmospheric effects on measurements Instructor(s): Austin A. Richards is a consultant to the aerospace industry on matters of imaging technology, particularly in the infrared and ultraviolet wavebands. He was a senior principal research scientist at FLIR in Santa Barbara until 2021. Austin has specialized in scientific applications of infrared imaging technology for over 22 years. He holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and is the author of the SPIE monograph Alien Vision: Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum with Imaging Technology. He is also an SPIE Fellow. Event: SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2022 Course Held: 05 April 2022