Infrared imaging radiometry is the use of an infrared camera to measure the infrared radiation from a target of interest. The most common application is to measure the temperature of an object, but there are many caveats to consider because an infrared camera actually measures an apparent temperature.
That said, what people want to measure is a kinetic surface temperature. Radiometric IR cameras are also used to measure radiance and radiant intensity – units of measure that have important applications across several fields. This talk focuses on what a radiometric camera measures, how a radiometric camera is calibrated, the main sources of error in measurements, and the main applications for these cameras.
About the presenter
Austin Richards, Ph.D., began his career in infrared imaging in 1999 at Indigo Systems in Santa Barbara, CA, which was acquired in 2004 by FLIR Systems, where he was a senior principal research scientist, specializing in cooled science camera applications engineering and systems design.
Richards is the author of the FLIR Infrared Imaging Radiometry Handbook, which is used as a textbook in a 2.5-day course that he teaches at test ranges around the world. He is currently a consultant to the defense and aerospace industry, specializing in infrared, ultraviolet and low-light imaging.
He is a Fellow of SPIE, a named inventor on 30 US patents, and the author of numerous papers and articles on imaging technology, as well as the SPIE monograph Alien Vision: Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum with Imaging Technology (2nd ed. 2011). Richards earned his doctorate in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and did postdoctoral fellowships at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Stockholm, along with field research at the South Pole station in Antarctica before leaving academia for industry. His personal website is www.austinrichards.com.