How do IR cameras work?

Last updated on August 11th, 2021 at 06:21 am

Infra-red radiation is an electromagnetic wave with a wavelength greater than that of visible light. When you use a camera, it can either capture heat or light. No camera captures both at the same time. An infra-red camera is based around this idea. It only captures the heat differences and a picture is created in accordance to that. An infra-red camera has five key features, namely:

Memory
Display
Processor
Lens
Sensor

An infra-red camera converts the captured infra-red data into an electronic image that identifies as a picture. It has a specific optics system that helps in focusing the infra-red energy onto a detector chip that has thousands of detector pixels aligned in a grid. All of the pixels react to the infra-red energy and produce an electronic signal. The processor obtains the electronic signal and applies a certain mathematics calculation on it determine the exact temperate. All of the temperatures have been assigned a certain color. The result of this calculation turns the signals into colors and image that is sent to the memory. Memory sends it to the cameras display and a thermal image is obtained. These images help in a lot of professions.