Abstract: An imaging and temperature monitoring system (10) is disclosed for displaying an image of an environment (E), along with information regarding the temperature of select regions (R) within the environment. The system includes a sensor head (12) equipped with a video imager (26) for producing a video image of the environment. The sensor head also includes a pyrometer (22) mounted on a computer-controlled translation stage (24), which allows the pyrometer to directly collect temperature information from the various regions. The combined imaging and temperature monitoring functions are advantageously achieved without tradeoffs in the performance of either function.

Abstract: A temperature-imaging system for generating an absolute temperature value for a point of interest on a monitored surface is disclosed. The system includes a camera and a temperature analyzer. The camera gathers video image data related to surface intensity and reference temperature data related to the absolute temperature at a reference point on the surface. The camera is configured so that the reference point is a fixed known point in the surface intensity image that moves with the movement of the camera. Thus, the reference temperature to reference point relationship is fixed. In operation, a video image and the reference temperature data are passed to the temperature analyzer. The temperature analyzer determines the absolute-temperature at a preselected point of interest on the surface. The temperature analyzer identifies the portion of the video image corresponding to the point of interest, and identifies the portion of the video image related to the reference point.

Abstract: A video imaging and counting system for use in counting moving particles. A video camera (14) is used to monitor the interior of a boiler (12) for carryover particles (46) of burning fuel. A video signal produced by the camera is electronically filtered according to a software algorithm implemented by a microcomputer (116). The video signal is digitized and at least a portion of it is processed and filtered to eliminate the fixed background noise, and variations in illumination across each image. Hot particles appearing as streaks in the image are counted when adjacent time/spatially filtered data points exceeding a threshold level lie in a defined ranged of angular trajectories. The range conforms to the expected motion of a particle entrained in hot gas flow within the area of interest in the boiler. An enhanced image of the moving particles filtered by a similar algorithm and the particle count are displayed on a video monitor (22).