Abstract: A pseudo-active chemical imaging sensor including irradiative transient heating, temperature nonequilibrium thermal luminescence spectroscopy, differential hyperspectral imaging, and artificial neural network technologies integrated together. The sensor may be applied to the terrestrial chemical contamination problem, where the interstitial contaminant compounds of detection interest (analytes) comprise liquid chemical warfare agents, their various derivative condensed phase compounds, and other material of a life-threatening nature. The sensor measures and processes a dynamic pattern of absorptive-emissive middle infrared molecular signature spectra of subject analytes to perform its chemical imaging and standoff detection functions successfully.