According to the international standards ISO 9001-9004 and EN 45001-45003 the industrial plants and the accreditation laboratories that implemented the quality systems according to these standards are required to evaluate an uncertainty of measurements. Manufacturers of thermal cameras do not offer any data that could enable estimation of measurement uncertainty of these imagers. Difficulties in determining the measurement uncertainty is an important limitation of thermal cameras for applications in the industrial plants and the cooperating accreditation laboratories that have implemented these quality systems. A set of parameters for characterization of commercial thermal cameras, a measuring set, some results of testing of these cameras, a mathematical model of uncertainty, and a software that enables quick calculation of uncertainty of temperature measurements with thermal cameras are presented in this paper.

Date Published: 23 March 2001
PDF: 15 pages
Proc. SPIE 4360, Thermosense XXIII, (23 March 2001); doi: 10.1117/12.421015

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4360:
Thermosense XXIII
Andres E. Rozlosnik; Ralph B. Dinwiddie, Editor(s)