Combined holography and thermography in a single sensor through image-plane holography at thermal infrared wavelengths

Holographic interferometry in the thermal wavelengths range, combining a CO2 laser and digital hologram recording with a microbolometer array based camera, allows simultaneously capturing temperature and surface shape information about objects. This is due to the fact that the holograms are affected by the thermal background emitted by objects at room temperature. We explain the setup and the processing of data which allows decoupling the two types of information. This natural data fusion can be advantageously used in a variety of nondestructive testing applications. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America