Thermal Camera Calibration and Photogrammetric Data Processing Schemes

Thermal imagery relating radiation in the long infrared domain allows for temperature analysis of object surfaces. Driven by the fast development of microbolometer detector arrays, uncooled thermal cameras are widely applied in applications such as building insulation inspection, water contamination monitoring. However, accurate geometric measurements and precise temperature retrievals are still nontrivial issues for uncooled thermal cameras. On the one hand, uncooled thermal cameras usually suffer from severe distortion effects. On the other hand, due to the immature detector devices, uncooled thermal cameras are easily affected by ambient conditions, which degrades the robustness of accurate temperature retrieval. Therefore, geometric calibration and radiometric calibration are thoroughly investigated in this thesis. Based on the calibration results, photogrammetric data processing schemes of several applications are developed and extensively discussed in this thesis: Flow velocity measurement, thermal attribute mapping of building facades and facade elements extraction from point clouds with thermal attributes