In the military field, with the sharp drop in the price of refrigeration products, the increase in working temperature, and the increase in portability, because of their long detection distance and high sensitivity, refrigerated infrared thermal imaging products will gradually replace some uncooled infrared thermal imaging products. Its scope of use and usage will be further expanded.

 

In the civilian field, infrared thermal imaging products have gradually expanded from industrial testing, inspection and quarantine, power testing, security monitoring and other industrial consumer goods to drones, Internet of Things, automotive assisted driving, smart air conditioners, residential security, outdoor night vision, and fire monitoring. , mobile phone and face payment, emergency public health safety prevention and control and other personal consumer goods development, the scope of its application will be further expanded, and the application tends to be high-end. Specifically, there are the following aspects.

 

 

1. Localization and independent development of infrared thermal imaging

The development of infrared thermal imaging technology began in the United States and has been used in the military field for a long time. Due to the military sensitivity of this technology and products, developed countries that master the most advanced infrared thermal imaging technology have long imposed strict export approval systems and even embargoes on my country. However, with the development of my country's basic industry and information industry, my country's infrared thermal imaging industry has also achieved important development. In the field of detectors, limited by basic scientific research capabilities and technological levels, there is still a certain gap with foreign countries. However, in the field of optical systems, In the fields of algorithms and image processing, my country has made great progress, making the overall product reach or close to the international advanced level, making up the gap in the field of detectors to a certain extent. In the future, with the accumulation and progress of various related technical links, my country's infrared thermal imaging industry is expected to achieve completely independent development.

 

2. Further enrichment of downstream applications and functions of infrared thermal imaging products

Infrared thermal imaging products can break through human visual barriers, detect objects in a completely dark environment, even in the presence of smoke and dust, and do not require light source lighting, so they can be used all day long. Because infrared thermal imaging has the characteristics of good concealment, strong anti-interference, strong target recognition ability, and all-weather work, it is playing an increasingly important role in both military and civilian fields. With the development and maturity of infrared thermal imaging technology, it has been widely used in the civilian field; in the military field, in order to give full play to the advantages of infrared thermal imaging, the scope of its application will be further expanded, and the application tends to be further high-end.

 

3. Multi-spectral fusion technology will be further developed

With the continuous improvement of sensor technology and information processing software and hardware technology, as well as the continuous progress of advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence technology, the effectiveness of photoelectric imaging is improved by integrating photoelectric technologies such as visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, and low-light sensors. Multispectral fusion can simultaneously acquire spectral features and spatial image information, and is an important direction for the development of optoelectronic imaging systems.

 

4. The resolution of infrared images continues to increase, and the movement technology continues to innovate and upgrade

With the continuous advancement of infrared detector technology, the resolution of mainstream infrared images has been upgraded from 320×240 and 384×288 to 640×480 and 640×512 in just a few years, and higher resolution detectors such as 1024×768 , 1280 × 1024 also began to gradually enter the official product from the sample. The improvement of the resolution makes the infrared image display more delicate, which is the general trend of the technological development of the infrared industry. The sharp increase in the amount of image data has brought great challenges to the movement technology. It is necessary to significantly increase the data bandwidth and memory capacity from the design of the movement, and improve the operation efficiency of the image processing algorithm, so as to realize the real-time data of high-resolution infrared images. deal with. In the future, the core technology of low-power embedded circuit design will be continuously innovated and upgraded to adapt to the increase of infrared image resolution.

 

5. The pixel size of the detector continues to decrease, gradually approaching the limit

With the expansion of the detector array, the pixel size of the detector is also decreasing. In recent years, the pixel size of mainstream uncooled detectors has been reduced from 25 μm to 17 μm and 12 μm. Recently, the uncooled pixel size of 10 μm has been reduced. Probes have also been launched. The benefits brought by the reduction of pixel size to infrared products are: the spatial resolution is improved under the same focal length of the lens, and the working distance is increased; or the focal length of the lens is reduced under the same spatial resolution, thereby reducing the Small lens size reduces the volume and weight of the final product. However, the pixel size cannot be reduced indefinitely. The pixel size of 12 μm and 10 μm is already close to the physical diffraction limit of 8-12 μm in the sensing spectrum of uncooled detectors, and it is almost impossible to reduce it further. The reduction of the pixel size also brings challenges to infrared optical lenses. When the pixel size is close to the diffraction limit, the difficulty of optical lens design increases rapidly. Differential control puts forward more stringent requirements.

 

6. The role of infrared imaging algorithms is becoming more and more important

With the rapid expansion of the application field of infrared technology, users have higher and higher requirements for the imaging effect of infrared products and the degree of automation of target detection and identification. The detector is driven by the movement to realize photoelectric signal conversion, and the output raw signal must go through a series of image processing algorithms to obtain a usable infrared image. Different imaging targets and backgrounds, and different environmental conditions put forward various requirements for imaging algorithms. A good algorithm can improve the clarity of infrared images on the basis of detectors, so as to obtain better performance indicators. The increase of new types of detectors puts forward higher requirements for the adaptive non-uniformity correction algorithm.