Real-time line scan extraction from infrared images using the wedge method in industrial environments

Abstract

Infrared imaging is based on the measurement of radiation of an object and its conversion to temperature. A vital parameter of the conversion procedure is emissivity, which defines the capability of a material to absorb and radiate energy. For most applications, emissivity is assumed to be constant. In applications measuring the temperature of objects with high emissivity, this is not problematic, as slight variations in the chosen emissivity value cause only minor changes in the resulting surface temperatures. However, when emissivities are low, as in steel strips, considering emissivity as a constant can lead to significant errors in temperature measurement. To overcome problems generated by variations in emissivity, one solution is to measure temperature where the steel strip forms a wedge, acting as a cavity. In the deepest part of the wedge, emissivity is sufficiently close to one. This work presents a real time image processing system to acquire infrared line scans for steel strips using the wedge method. The proposed system confronts two challenges: extracting infrared line scans in real time from the deepest part of the wedge in rectangular infrared images, and translating pixels from the line scan into real-world units.