Posted to News on 17th Jul 2007, 21:43
Image Builder software stitches together infrared images
There is often a need to conduct a thermal imaging survey of a particularly long or tall object such as a kiln, a cracker or, indeed, a building. One answer is to take the image from a greater distance away, but this often compromises measurement accuracy - although with a high-resolution camera such as the ThermaCAM P640 from Flir Systems this is not the case. Its 640 x 480 focal plane array allows small problems to be found at greater distances. Sometimes, however, the layout of the plant simply does not allow large objects to be viewed with sufficient perspective.
A software development from Flir Systems that is especially beneficial in these circumstances is Image Builder. It stitches images together so that images can be gathered without the need for the operator to increase his or her distance from the target.
Image stitching is nothing new. Most graphics packages offer this capability, but the key differentiator with Image Builder is that once the image is stitched together, it retains its thermal data and can therefore still be analysed in all Flir Systems' software packages at a later stage. So with the 640 x 480 ThermaCAM P640 using Image Builder's maximum 3 x 3 grid of images, users have a 1920 x 1440 pixel image – almost 3 megapixels!
