Physics-based image enhancement for infrared thermography

Thermal imaging with an infrared camera can be used to view the location and intensity of heat sources in space and time. In a thermal conductor, thermal diffusion blurs out those heat sources. Knowledge of the physics of thermal diffusion can be used to enhance the spatial and temporal resolution of thermal images. In two dimensions, quantitative reconstruction of the heat source intensity is possible. The same algorithm applied to three-dimensional heat flows provides dramatic improvements in temporal and spatial resolution of the thermal images. Performance is illustrated both in theory and by experiment. An application example demonstrates utility to nondestructive evaluation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.