A resonant absorption cavity that couples long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) light into a movable plate has been demonstrated for thermal detectors, especially microbolometers. Each device is continuously tunable over 8.7-11.1 microm by using electrostatic actuation with voltages from 0 to 42 V. The width of the resonance is relatively broad, approximately 1.5 microm, to match the large widths of ...

Chalcogenide glasses are emerging as important enabling materials for low-cost infrared imaging by virtue of their transparency in the key short-wave infrared (SWIR) to long-wave infrared (LWIR) bands and the ability to be mass produced and molded into near-net shape lenses. In this paper, we introduce a new family of chalcogenide glasses, which offer visible as well as infrared transmission an...

This paper details various aspects of the detection and identification of chemical plumes in long wave infrared (LWIR) data. The lack of well defined edges and the dynamic nature of a gas cloud leads to challenges in detection, particularly when the cloud diffuses and becomes thin. Contemporary graph segmentation algorithms are investigated to track the movement of the gaseous cloud as it sprea...

This paper presents a method to detect boats and life rafts on long wave infrared (LWIR) images, captured by an aerial platform. The method applies the concept of image saliency to highlight distinct areas on the images. However saliency algorithms always highlight salient points in the image, even in the absence of targets. We propose a statistical method based on the saliency algorithm output...

A key problem for face recognition has been accurate identification under variable illumination conditions. Conventional video cameras sense reflected light so that image grayvalues are a product of both intrinsic skin reflectivity and external incident illumination, thus obfuscating the intrinsic reflectivity of skin. Thermal emission from skin, on the other hand, is an intrinsic measurement t...

Present day sensing elements used in thermo-resistive type uncooled detectors or bolometers either suffer from material incompatibility issues have relatively poor performance the long wave infrared region (LWIR). This work explores potential of meso-porous silicon films as base for element these bolometer applications. The highly sensitive depends on electrical properties, specifically resisti...

Longwave Infrared (LWIR) radiation comprising atmospheric and surface emissions provides information for a number of applications including atmospheric profiling, surface temperature and emissivity estimation, and cloud depiction and characterization. The LWIR spectrum also contains absorption lines for numerous molecular species which can be utilized in quantifying species amounts. Modeling th...

In recent years long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral imagery has significantly improved in quality and become much more widely available, sparking interest in a variety of applications involving remote sensing of surface composition. This in turn has motivated the development and study of LWIR-focused algorithms for atmospheric retrieval, temperature-emissivity separation (TES) and mat...

In the search and rescue efforts soon after disaster such as floods, the time critical activities of survivor detection and localization can be solved by using thermal long-wave infrared (LWIR) cameras which are more robust to illumination and background textures than visual cameras. This particular problem is especially challenging due to the limited computational power available on-board comm...