Near infrared spectral imaging of explosives using a tunable laser source

Diffuse reflectance near infrared hyperspectral imaging is an important analytical tool for a wide variety of industries, including agriculture(1,2), consumer products, chemical(3) and pharmaceutical development and production(4,5). Using this technique as a method for the standoff detection of explosive particles is presented and discussed. The detection of the particles is based on the diffuse reflectance of light from the particle in the near infrared wavelength range where CH, NH, OH vibrational overtones and combination bands are prominent. The imaging system is a NIR focal plane array camera with a tunable OPO laser system as the illumination source. The OPO is programmed to scan over a wide spectral range in the NIR and the camera is synchronized to record the light reflected from the target for each wavelength. The spectral resolution of this system is significantly higher than that of hyperspectral systems that incorporate filters or dispersive elements. The data acquisition is very fast and the entire hyperspectral cube can be collected in seconds. A comparison of data collected with the OPO system to data obtained with a broadband light source with LCTF filters is presented.