It is for example of great interest to be able to process images taken by infrared cameras (IR-cameras). IR-cameras are used for capturing images showing the temperature variance for different objects in a view. Such thermal images are for example used when searching for defects in devices since defect parts of devices are often heated before they break.
An IR-camera typically captures information of temperatures from about —60 degrees Celsius to about 2000 degrees Celsius. This range is called the thermal camera dynamic range. Typically a thermal image will show the background ambient temperature and some hot or cold objects that will be subject for inspection. Background ambient will vary from outdoor winter temperature to a hot summer day temperature. The inspected object (a thermal anomaly) differ from the background as a hot or cold object within or outside the typical background range. Thus a thermal image will comprise a much smaller range than the thermal camera dynamic range. An image could be prepared from only this interesting temperature span and then be delivered to for example a customer. This is today a common way to handle temperature images. Thus the images taken by infrared cameras are processed by the image provider and then transferred to customers as a view where only a part of the initially captured data is shown. A problem with this is that this view cannot be processed by the customers any further. The customer may have a different opinion than the provider of the image about what is the interesting part of the view. Furthermore, if the temperature span for visualising the background is chosen to be for example 20-40 degrees Celsius, extreme events, such as a hotspot (a thermal anomaly like an overheated electric conductor) or an explosion, will saturate in the image thermal range and not be shown in the image.
Another approach today is to provide all the initially captured data to the customer. A problem with this method is that the customer not is able to see the image at all before he has processed it and to process the initially captured data the customer needs to have dedicated software.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds