Testing and evaluation of thermal cameras for absolute temperature measurement

The accuracy of temperature measurement is the most important criterion for the evaluation of thermal cameras used in applications requiring absolute temperature measurement. All the main international metrological organizations currently propose a parameter called uncertainty as a measure of measurement accuracy. We propose a set of parameters for the characterization of thermal measurement cameras. It is shown that if these parameters are known, then it is possible to determine the uncertainty of temperature measurement due to only the internal errors of these cameras. Values of this uncertainty can be used as an objective criterion for comparisons of different thermal measurement cameras. (C) 2000 Society of Photo-Optical instrumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(00)03709-0].