The Problem Current infrared camera technology makes it difficult to identify points of interest due to: Thermal and Visible Images are inconsistent.

The Problem

Current infrared camera technology makes it difficult to identify points of interest due to: Thermal and Visible Images are inconsistent

Thermal Images do not look similar to visible light images

Especially in low contrast images it can be difficult to see the “edges”

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/jwst_infrared.html

E.g. Where is this man’s chin?

http://activerain.trulia.com/blogsview/2406611/avoid-costly-mold-testing-with-ogden-utah-infrared-home-inspections

This is how other people fixed this problem

Control Image A visible light (VL) image taken using a separate VL camera built into

the IR camera

E.g. FLIR ThermaCam® P65

Does not offer automatic alignment or merging of images

Laser Pointer Laser allows user to manually point laser into area of interest

E.g. FLIR ThermaCam® E65

The laser is not visible in the IR spectrum

Problematic if there is a large hot or cold spot

Hard to identify exact area of interest

The Solution

Kirk R. Johnson, Thomas McManus, and John W. Pratten

Their solution Combine both solutions

The title of the patent

Visible Light and IR Combined Image Camera with a Laser Pointer

This is new! Offers automatic alignment of VL images and images corrected for

parallax error

Can blend VL and IR images

Higher contrast => Allows for cheaper, higher quality IR imaging

Uses a laser pointer to identify area of interest as well as align the images

Results

IR Image VL Image Blended Image (alpha)

http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=07538326&SectionNum=1&IDKey=DED6CE9A235E&HomeUrl=http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/patimg.htm