Thermal Imaging and the C-c-c-cold

Anyone out there old enough to remember the ‘60’s movie, “the Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” ?  

Well 2014 is hearing a real-life warning that rings of similar urgency. “The Polar Vortex is coming!  The Polar Vortex is coming!”

Now that it’s here, and roughly half the country is experiencing dangerously frigid temperatures ranging from single digits in the Northeast to minus double digits in the Upper Midwest, it’s only natural that the TV news shows abound with segments on keeping warm.

 So I wasn’t surprised to see a segment on dressing warmly enough to prevent frostbite which can attack exposed skin in as little as five minutes.  What surprised, or shall I say impressed me, was to see that they were using thermal imaging sensors to illustrate how, even when we think we are warmly dressed, we may still be losing body heat. If you recall from previous blog posts, anything with a core temperature above absolute zero emits I-R energy.  Since absolute zero translates to zero degrees Kelvin,( minus 469 Fahrenheit), we can safely say everybody and everything on the planet gives off I-R energy. 

Thermal imaging cameras contain special lenses that focus the infra-red energy emitted by anything in its field of view. Since there can be literally thousands of points in the FOV, the cameras contain image sensors that use a phased array of infra-red  detectors to gather the points together and create a detailed temperature pattern  known as a thermogram. Using this, the thermal sensor is able to map out an image of the object within its environment using color to reflect a gradient of temperature  

This type of thermal imaging produced what I saw on my TV screen, half of it anyway. On one side of the split screen  in normal viewing mode stood two men, side by side, both dressed in warm-appearing down jackets but of slightly different styles.

• ·         One jacket had a flap covering the zipper, the other didn’t.
• ·         One man had on a hat under his hood, the other wore a hat, but not a hood.
• ·         And their gloves were slightly different –one wore mittens extending up under his sleeve, the other wore slightly shorter, fingered gloves. 

The other half of the screen showed them as viewed with a thermal camera. The difference in color as evidenced by the thermogram showed that while some heat was being lost through the flap covering the zipper much more was escaping through the unprotected zipper. Similar color differences showed heat lost through the hat but not through the hat and the hood, and finally patterns of escaped heat between the fingers and out of the margin between glove and jacket but noticeably less from the long mittens.

This is not the actual image shown but it is similar in that it shows how proper clothing retains body heat.

The use of Thermal imaging provided an excellent lesson, and I took note. When I went out to shovel my walk shortly thereafter, I checked my parka. I honestly had never noticed if it had a protective flap over the zipper. It did, and now I knew why it was there. I rummaged through my gloves for mittens, and although I find it bulky and annoying, I raised my hood over my warm woolly hat.

Thermal imaging can serve well for surveillance in areas devoid of light. For information about thermal imaging and IP cameras, call Kintronics at 914-944-3425 to speak to one of our sales engineers or fill out an information request form.