What is Thermal Imaging?
By Tim Rollins, Capstone Inspections, LLC
Let’s start off by answering the question “What is Thermal Imaging?” Glad you asked. Thermal imaging is currently be used in hundreds of fields a few of which are; ships navigating at night, Commercial security, Industrial inspections, Commercial Property Inspections, Building / machine maintenance, and one of the most recent additions is in the medical field. In order to explain Thermal Imaging we will need to start with short a science lesson.
Spectrum of Visible Light
There are many types of “light”. These different types of light are collectively called the Electromagnet Spectrum. The portion of light we can “see” every day makes up only a small part of this spectrum as shown in the diagram below.
On either side of the visible light section in the diagram above we find Ultraviolet to the left and Inferred to the right. Since all light is made up of wave lengths the distance between the waves indicates where it fits on the spectrum. Higher energy makes larger waves are on the left end of the spectrum. Shorter, lower energy waves move to the right. Inferred waves are emitted or radiated by objects that are giving up heat or absorbing heat. This amount of heat can be seen using a special camera that can only see the “light” in the Inferred section. As a result these highly specialized cameras can only read the surface tempatur of the object. This is very important to understand that this is only surface temperature. Infrared energy is light that is not visible because its wavelength is too short to be detected by the human eye. This part of electromagnetic spectrum is perceived as heat. So in essence a Thermal Image is just what it sounds like a heat picture.
