Thermal Imaging

Thermographic or Infrared (IR) cameras create images using IR radiation as apposed to the visible light used in conventional cameras. Basically, what this means is that they are able to “see” heat as it radiates from an object and then display the differences in heat within its picture as various shades of grey in black and white video. Thermal cameras are therefore able to see through objects when a heat source is inside, require no light, and are not affected by things like smoke or dust.

Thermal cameras can be used to great effect in outdoor and low-zero light settings. These cameras have the ability to look through some amount of light foliage as well. This makes them particularly easy to camouflage, if desired. In many cases an IR camera could be used entirely in place of a traditional one, especially if it is being used to trigger an alarm and not just for surveillance.

IR is something that can be integrated into existing systems. It is especially helpful in analytics due to its ability to generate high contrast images. The high-contrast, b&w images provide another metric in an entirely different spectrum of light for the algorithms of the analytics software to perform its operations on.

Analytics is already used to similar effect in systems with conventional cameras only, but being able to match heat signature against already existing video analytics creates a more robust and reliable overall surveillance.

Most importantly, a system can be set up to trigger only on the heat signature of a person, whereas the heat signature of an animal would be ignored.

To learn more about how thermal imaging cameras can help protect your commercial facility, please contact Security Technology of South Texas, Inc. at 210-446-4863 .