This Article is about:
- IR-Fusion® explained
IR-Fusion® explained
Fluke IR-Fusion® patented technology facilitates the interpretation of low resolution infrared images.
Modern thermal cameras have both infrared and visual cameras in one instrument and therefore provide two images, an infrared and a visual image. By knowing the field of view of both cameras and their mutual positioning in the thermal camera body, it is possible to define the required scaling of both images and displacement between them to provide pixel by pixel overlay.
The compensation of the displacement between visual and infrared image depends on the distance at which the camera is focused. The camera monitors the focusing distance and provides dynamic automatic compensation for precise alignment of both images.
Having both images perfectly aligned and properly scaled opens new possibilities for analysis and interpretation of the infrared images.
This can start from the traditional "Full IR" image, where only infrared image is displayed:
As this image is actually overlayed on top of the visual image, having higher resolution and bringing more details, these details can be revealed by using different blending levels of the infrared image, providing actual fusion of both infrared and visual image, which actually gave the name of the technology itself:
If necessary, it is possible to use wider field of view of the visual image to get more context of the whole scene using "Picture-in-Picture" (PIP) representation:
Or it is possible to show in infrared only the points having the temperatures within the predefined range of interest by using "Color Alarm":
And of course, as infrared image is just a set of temperature data, overlayed on top of visual image, it is possible even switch off the infrared view completely, and focus on the temperature data analysis directly on the visual image using 0% blending level of the Full Visual view:
And as the perfect alignment between visual and infrared images achieved when the camera is focused perfectly, IR-Fusion® technology can be used for visual monitoring of the thermal camera focusing, by aligning both visual and blended infrared image:
The possibility to combine all mentioned capabilities, which you can use in any combination of all above mentioned views, is the essence of the IR-Fusion® technology, which should not be mixed up with simpler partial implementations of this technology by some other vendors, where only some parts of these possibilities are being provided.