How Does it Work? Thermal Imaging Technology

Thermal imaging cameras are essential pieces of firefighting equipment and no modern fire and rescue kit is complete without one. They have become so integral to the work of firefighting teams all over the world that they are almost taken for granted but the amount of precision engineering involved in creating them is not to be taken lightly.

So, everyone knows what a thermal imaging camera does but HOW does it do it? We explain in five simple steps.

What we experience as colour is in fact light bouncing off objects and being bent, absorbed or refracted in different ways. The light reaches our eyes and we see the object – only a small portion of the light spectrum is visible and there are many other forms that we can’t see such as ultraviolet and infrared. The lens of a thermal imaging camera collects and focuses the, to our eyes invisible, infrared light.

This focused infrared light is then scanned by detectors aligned in a phased array, creating a thermogram – a detailed and accurate pattern of temperatures. The information, obtained from thousands of reference points in the viewing-field, is obtained in around 1/30th of a second.

The detector elements pass the thermogram on to a convertor which then translates it into a series of electrical impulses ready to move on to the next stage of the complex yet lightning-fast operation

These transfer to a processing unit comprising a circuit board with dedicated chip to translate information into viewable data that can be clearly understood by fire and rescue teams

The processing unit completes the job by sending the final image to a display unit, where the various colours it appears in are precise indicators of hot and cool zones, facilitating fire and rescue operations

Thermal imaging cameras are used for a multitude of tasks, from locating trapped victims to planning more successful methods of fire control. It is important to purchase the very best quality that budget permits a to source all firefighting equipment from a reputable, well-known and reliable company such as Terberg DTS.

Check out our collection of thermal imaging products and get in touch with us to find out the definitive reason that you need one!