J. Sens. Sens. Syst.

, 5, 9–16, 2016
www.j-sens-sens-syst.net/5/9/2016/
doi:10.5194/jsss-5-9-2016
© Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License.

Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras

A. Tempelhahn, H. Budzier, V. Krause, and G. Gerlach
Technische Universität Dresden, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Solid-State Electronics
Laboratory, Dresden, Germany
Correspondence to: A. Tempelhahn ([email protected])
Received: 6 October 2015 – Accepted: 30 November 2015 – Published: 15 January 2016

Abstract. Infrared (IR) cameras based on microbolometer focal plane arrays (FPAs) are the most widely used
cameras in thermography. New fields of applications like handheld devices and small distributed sensors benefit
from the latest sensor improvements in terms of cost and size reduction. In order to compensate for disturbing
influences derived from changing ambient conditions, radiometric cameras use an optical shutter for online re-
calibration purposes, partially also together with sensor temperature stabilization. For these new applications, IR
cameras should consist only of infrared optics, a sensor array, and digital signal processing (DSP). For accept-
able measurement uncertainty values without using an optical shutter (shutter-less), the disturbing influences of
changing thermal conditions have to be treated based on temperature measurements of the camera interior. We
propose a compensation approach based on calibration measurements under controlled ambient conditions. All
correction parameters are determined during the calibration process. Without sensor temperature stabilization
(TEC-less), the pixel responsivity is also affected by the camera temperature changes and has to be considered
separately. This paper presents the details of the compensation procedure and discusses relevant aspects to gain
low temperature measurement uncertainty. The residual measurement uncertainty values are compared to the
shutter-based compensation approach.

1 Introduction dent radiation. This temperature change affects the electri-

cal resistance of the bolometer material due to its tempera-
ture coefficient of resistance (TCR). Common resistor mate-
The evolution of infrared (IR) thermography including the rials are amorphous silicon (a-Si) and vanadium oxide (VOx)
discovery of new fields of applications is based on the de- with a thin film TCR of about −0.03 and −0.027 K, respec-
velopment of small, power-efficient and, most of all, low- tively (Budzier and Gerlach, 2011). The change in electri-
cost IR sensors. Microbolometer focal plane arrays (FPAs) cal resistance is determined using a readout integrated circuit
are thermal sensors and are also called uncooled sensors be- (ROIC) within the silicon substrate generating a radiation-
cause they work at room temperature without any cooling. proportional voltage signal for each pixel. The raw infrared
This cost-reducing benefit compared to photon sensors is the data set comprises the signal voltages of the entire sensor ar-
reason why microbolometers are widely used in process con- ray and contains temperature information from the observed
trol, fire prevention, fire protection and surveillance as well scene but also from the camera interior due to the huge field
as for research and development tasks. of view (FOV) of the pixels.
Each pixel of a microbolometer sensor array acts as a The state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication technology
single sensor element. To ensure the required thermal iso- enables microbolometer sensors with 17 µm pixel pitch and
lation, such a microbolometer pixel consists of a semicon- a wide variety of spatial resolutions from about 80 × 80 to
ductor bridge and is coated with the bolometer material 1024 × 768 pixel (Tissot et al., 2013). This leads to sensor
(Fig. 1). The cavity beneath the micro-bridge works as a λ/4- sizes from a few centimeters down to only a few millime-
resonator/absorber. The entire sensor has to be under vacuum ters depending on the pixel resolution of the sensor. Sen-
atmosphere for thermal isolation reasons. The temperature sor manufacturers recently made a lot of efforts to improve
of the bolometer bridge changes due to the absorbed inci-

Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the AMA Association for Sensor Technology.
10 A. Tempelhahn et al.: Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras

Figure 1. Bridge structure of a single microbolometer pixel (Moreno et al., 2012).

the vacuum packaging technology from common chip level bration procedure for determining correction parameters that
packages (CLPs) via wafer level packaging (WLP) to pixel allow one to compensate for the disturbing influences of
level packaging (PLP). This integration of vacuum packag- a changing ambient temperature. Relevant aspects to gain
ing technology into the semiconductor processing will dra- low temperature measurement uncertainty are discussed and
matically reduce the sensor cost and, therefore, will make compared to the shutter-based compensation approach.
microbolometer FPAs more attractive for lowest-cost appli-
cations like handheld devices and small distributed IR sen-
sors (Hoelter et al., 2015; Takasawa, 2015). 2 Radiation model
IR cameras are used for radiometric measurement of tem-
perature distributions. Here, two concerns mainly have to be In the following, the setup of an IR camera as shown in Fig. 2
taken into account: the sensor non-uniformity due to fabrica- is considered. The microbolometer FPA consists of pixels lo-
tion variations and the influences derived from changing am- cated in line i and column j . The exchanged (incident minus
bient conditions, especially the ambient temperature. In the emitted) radiant flux 8ij of each pixel (ij ) is converted into
past such cameras used an integrated thermoelectric cooler the raw signal voltage Vraw,ij corresponding to the linear re-
(TEC) for keeping the temperature of the FPA constant and lation between radiation and signal voltage,
preventing the sensor parameters’ offset voltage and respon-
sivity to change according to the ambient temperature. But Vraw,ij = RV ,ij 8ij + V0,ij , (1)
the high power consumption of this stabilization is a big
drawback and is the decisive reason for using TEC-less mi- with the two sensor parameters responsivity RV ,ij and offset
crobolometer FPAs, e.g., for mobile IR devices or distributed voltage V0,ij . Both of them vary over the sensor array due
sensor networks. to process variations during the sensor fabrication. Further-
The correction approaches for infrared imagers and radio- more, both also depend on the sensor temperature ϑfpa .
metric cameras differ in the required calibration effort (Tem- Previous investigations have shown that the pixel’s field of
pelhahn et al., 2015). Radiometrically calibrated infrared view covers nearly the entire half space. Therefore, the corre-
cameras typically use optical shutters for runtime recalibra- sponding pixel’s projected solid angle ωpix amounts almost to
tion purposes in order to regularly correct thermal drift in- π (Tempelhahn et al., 2013). Infrared cameras usually com-
fluences on the measurement. The calibration procedure for prise infrared optics with an f -number about unity. For that
the shutter-based compensation approach is presented in de- reason, the projected solid angle ωobj related to the object
tail in Budzier and Gerlach (2015). But the shutter is often irradiance Eobj is about 1/5 of ωpix (Budzier, 2014). The re-
the size-limiting component of an infrared camera because maining projected solid angle ωcam equals 4/5 of ωpix and is
it has to cover the entire aperture. Another drawback of the covered by the camera interior. Hence, each pixel also detects
shutter-based compensation approach is the interruption of the irradiance Ecam emitted by the camera housing and de-
the measurement during recalibration. Therefore, shutter-less pending on the camera temperature ϑcam . Furthermore, each
infrared cameras are advantageous, especially for the new pixel emits the radiant exitance Mpix into the environment
fields of application mentioned above. This paper presents due to the sensor temperature ϑfpa . The exchanged radiant
a novel shutter-less compensation approach based on a cali- flux 8ij from Eq. (1) can be written as a product of the pixel
area Apix and a linear combination of these three radiant den-

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A. Tempelhahn et al.: Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras 11

Figure 2. Radiation components in an infrared camera. Eobj radia-

tion derived from the object depending on its temperature ϑobj cov-
ering the projected solid angle ωobj , Ecam radiation from the camera Figure 3. Correction procedure for shutter- and TEC-less IR cam-
interior related to the camera temperature ϑcam and the solid angle eras.
ωcam , as well as the radiant exitance Mpix of the sensor depend-
ing on the sensor temperature ϑfpa emitted into the projected solid
angle ωpix . rived from camera radiation, and the pixel radiant exitance.


offsetij ϑfpa , ϑcam (5)




sities with their corresponding projected solid angles: = V0,ij ϑfpa + Vcam,ij ϑfpa , ϑcam + Vpix ϑfpa


8ij =Apix ωobj,ij Eobj ϑobj + ωcam,ij (2)


Ecam (ϑcam ) − π Mpix ϑfpa .
3 Correction approach
Figure 2 illustrates this radiation composition and points
The suggested approach adapts the shutter-based correction
out the influences of the three temperatures of the object,
procedure presented in Budzier and Gerlach (2015) and con-
the camera and the sensor on the exchanged pixel radiant
siders the different disturbing influences separately. Figure 3
flux 8ij . The projected solid angles ωobj and ωcam of each
illustrates the flowchart of the calibration procedure to deter-
pixel depend on the position within the FPA and are rotation-
mine the necessary correction coefficients.
symmetrically distributed relating to the optical axis of the
First, the bias voltages of the microbolometer have to be
IR optics.
adjusted according to the required object and ambient tem-
By replacing 8ij from Eq. (1) with Eq. (2), it is possible
perature ranges. The first bad pixel replacement procedure
to separate Eobj containing the essential object temperature
determines pixels that show no response or have an abnor-
information ϑobj from all other disturbing influences:
mal behavior.



Vraw,ij ϑobj , ϑcam , ϑfpa =gainij ϑfpa Eobj,ij ϑobj


(3) The main calibration steps are non-uniformity correc-

tion (NUC) as well as gain and offset correction. As men-
+ offsetij ϑcam , ϑfpa . tioned before, each microbolometer FPA shows a pixel
non-uniformity due to the semiconductor fabrication pro-
The slope gainij of the pixel-specific linear equation com- cess. This can be corrected by applying the two-point non-
prises the pixel area Apix , the object-projected angle ωobj,ij uniformity correction (NUC) based on a slope coefficient aij
and the sensor’s temperature-dependent responsivity RV ,ij : and an intercept coefficient bij :



gainij ϑfpa = Apix ωobj,ij RV ,ij ϑfpa . (4) Vnuc,ij = aij Vraw,ij + bij . (6)
The intercept offsetij combines different disturbing parts: The NUC is bound to a certain ambient temperature
the offset voltage V0,ij , the signal parts Vcam,ij and Vpix de- ϑamb,ref . Changes in the ambient temperature ϑamb are trans-

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12 A. Tempelhahn et al.: Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras

ferred inside the camera housing due to heat conduction and Table 1. Properties of the used infrared camera.
convection, and change the camera’s and sensor’s tempera-
ture with specific delay times and time constants. Manufacturer ULIS, France
The sensor temperature dependency of the pixel respon- Sensor type UL03162-028
sivity RV ,ij is determined using two switchable blackbodies TEC w/o
at different constant temperatures. This ensures a constant Shutter w/o
incident radiant flux difference 18. Changes in RV ,ij are NETD < 100 mK (F/1, 300 K, 50 Hz)
Resolution 384 × 288
measured using the signal voltage difference 1V in relation
Pixel pitch 25 µm
to the sensor temperature ϑfpa via the relation Uniformity (deviation) < 1.5 %
Power consumption < 100 mW
1V f -number 1.0
RV = . (7)
18 Focal length 18 mm

The regression function gV ,ij is based on several support-

ing points at different ambient temperatures and, hence, dif-
4 IR camera setup
ferent sensor temperatures. Using this pixel gain correction
function, the NUC-corrected signal voltage is weighted: The mentioned calibration procedure will be demonstrated
for an IR camera comprising a microbolometer sensor array
Vnuc,ij
Vgain,ij =
. (8) without temperature stabilization (Table 1).
gV ,ij ϑfpa The sensor temperature ϑfpa is provided by the detector it-
self and it is assumed that changes are uniformly distributed
The offset correction considers the temperature influences over the entire sensor array. The sensor specification de-
in Eq. (5). The offset voltage V0,ij and the signal voltage part scribes the sensor temperature dependency of the pixel re-
Vpix are compensated for in relation to ϑfpa . The signal volt- sponsivity with a polynomial of the second order,
age part Vcam,ij corresponding to the disturbing camera ra-
2


diant flux is estimated based on additional temperature in- RV ,ij ϑfpa = r0,ij + r1,ij ϑfpa + r2,ij ϑfpa , (11)
formation ϑcam from inside the camera using a polynomial
regression function of the second order: and the sensor temperature dependency of the pixel offset
voltage with a polynomial of the third order,
2
Vcam,ij (ϑcam ) = c0,ij + c1,ij ϑcam + c2,ij ϑcam . (9)
2
V0,ij ϑfpa = v0,ij + v1,ij ϑfpa + v2,ij ϑfpa 3
+ v3,ij ϑfpa . (12)
The offset correction function oV ,ij is pixel-specific and
can be based on more than one camera temperature value, The camera temperature is not homogeneously distributed
since the camera temperature measurement depends on the inside the camera. Electrical losses derived from the digital
position of the thermometer: signal processor (DSP) and the sensor array cause a tempera-

ture gradient between positions close to the sensor and in the
Voffset,ij = Vgain,ij − oV ,ij ϑfpa , ϑcam . (10) inner side of the camera housing. For that reason, three tem-
perature probes (LM61, Texas Instruments, USA) are placed
After this ambient temperature compensation, the signal inside the camera housing in different positions (Fig. 4). Each
voltage Voff,ij should depend only on the object tempera- of the temperature probes TP1 –TP3 shows different temporal
ture ϑobj . Pixels that cannot be corrected appropriately are step responses to changes in the ambient temperature ϑamb .
rejected due to the second bad pixel replacement procedure. The response time of the temperature probes, which indicates
The conversion of the signal voltage level into real temper- how fast temperature changes occur, varies from 39 s for TP1
ature values is the last step. This transfer function is based on and 66 s for TP2 to 105 s for TP3 . The same relations oc-
either a second-order polynomial or a Planck-like regression cur in terms of time constants that give information about
function that has to be determined using a sufficient number the temperature settling time until the steady state is reached.
of measurements of known temperatures as supporting data The raw signal voltage Vraw,ij responds to an ambient tem-
points (Budzier and Gerlach, 2015). perature change, even before TP1 reacts to those temperature
The proposed compensation approach can be easily changes, and reaches the steady state together with TP3 . This
adapted for infrared cameras using microbolometer FPAs demonstrates that each temperature probe provides different
with TEC. If the sensor temperature ϑfpa is stabilized, then temporal information about occurring temperature changes,
the sensor parameters RV ,ij and V0,ij stay constant and the and should be used for compensation. The offset compensa-
intercept offsetij depends only on the camera temperature tion based on different temperature probe values should ben-
ϑcam . For that reason, the gain correction step can be skipped efit from having more information about temperature probes
and the offset correction step can be simplified. due to the possibility of capturing the cameras’ temperature

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A. Tempelhahn et al.: Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras 13

Table 2. Properties of the used blackbodies.

Property Water bath blackbody RCN 300 4 element Peltier blackbody

Manufacturer Self-built HGH Infrared Systems, France Self-built
Working principle Water bath Blackbody Blackbody
Radiator size 350 × 350 mm 300 × 300 mm 4 × 35 × 35 mm
Material Copper water tank Aluminium block Copper plate
Radiator size Volume 20 L Thickness 50 mm Thickness 3 mm
Temperature range 0–80 ◦ C 25–300 ◦ C −10–100 ◦ C

Figure 4. Positions of the temperature sensor sites inside the cam-

era housing and the detector. TP1 (red) is placed on the front plate
carrying the optics. TP2 (green) is located on the front side of the Figure 5. Photograph of the calibration setup.
optical channel. TP3 (blue) is placed close to the detector and the
signal processing unit on the back side of the optical channel. The
fourth site is located inside the sensor array itself (violet). A mechanically moved plate is controlled to open and
close the lateral opening of the heating chamber in order to
guarantee a homogeneous chamber temperature distribution
changes completely with respect to the direction of its prop- and to reduce the convection between the heating chamber
agation. and the outside. Several thermo-elements were placed inside
and outside the heating chamber to observe the temperature
changes. The blackbody temperatures were captured using
5 Calibration
pyrometers.
In the following, the experimental results of the proposed cal-
ibration method using the IR camera from Table 1 will be 5.2 Non-uniformity correction (NUC)
presented. First, the calibration stand will be explained.
The NUC is based on raw infrared images of at least two dif-
ferent blackbody temperatures that should be spread over the
5.1 Calibration stand targeted measurement range. The surface temperature should
The calibration stand was designed to meet the requirements be uniformly distributed over the entire camera field of view.
of the proposed calibration procedure. The changing ambi- The pixel-dependent slope and intercept values of the pixel
ent temperature was simulated by using a heating chamber response curves from Eq. (3) are equalized, yielding the de-
with the infrared camera positioned inside. A lateral open- viation 1Vij :
ing allows the camera to be face panel blackbodies or testing 1Vij = Vraw,ij − Vnuc = aij Vraw,ij + bij . (13)
scenes (Fig. 5).
For the NUC and the ambient temperature compensa- The resulting linear system of equations is solved in order
tion steps, two panel blackbodies were used (Table 2): to determine the pixel coefficients aij and bij (Fig. 6). After
(1) RCN 300 from HGH Infrared Systems, France, and (2) a the NUC, each pixel shows the same behavior when looking
self-built water bath blackbody. A self-built four-element at an object with the same surface temperature since the pixel
blackbody comprising four independently working small responses follow the same so-called standard curve. How-
Peltier element radiators was used for radiometric calibration ever, this works only for certain ambient temperature condi-
and testing purposes. tions when the NUC images were taken. The accuracy of the

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14 A. Tempelhahn et al.: Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras

Figure 6. NUC coefficient matrices aij (a) and bij (b). The central symmetric shape of aij is due to the relation to the pixel-dependent
projected solid angle ωfov,ij .

Figure 7. Temperature courses during the offset calibration regime: (a) temperature sensor signals; (b) mean signal voltage versus the four
temperature inputs. The shape of the steady-state curves corresponds to a polynomial of the second or third order. The deviations from these
steady-state functions are due to the transient behavior during the temperature change.

NUC can be improved by using more than two raw infrared 5.4 Offset correction
images and applying the least-squares method to determine
The offset correction is based on a multivariate linear regres-
the NUC coefficients.
sion model comprising
– polynomials of the second order for each temperature
5.3 Gain correction
probe inside the camera (Eq. 9), and
Here the relation between responsivity and sensor tempera-
– one polynomial of the third order for the relation be-
ture pertaining to Eq. (11) is determined for each pixel and
tween offset voltage and sensor temperature (Eq. 12).
will be taken as the weighting function gV ,ij in Eq. (8). Ac-
cording to Eq. (7), different infrared images of two blackbod- Since all temperature inputs are correlated with each other
ies with constant temperatures of 20 and 80 ◦ C were used. due to heat propagation and equalization processes, addi-
Since the responsivity depends only on the absolute sensor tional information on the temperature distribution is needed.
temperature ϑfpa and corresponds to a second-order polyno- It can be extracted from the cross-correlation of two or more
mial, it is sufficient to use at least three pairs of infrared im- temperature inputs.
ages taken at different ambient temperatures. Both blackbod- The offset correction function oV ,ij in Eq. (10) comprises
ies used (Table 2) cover the entire camera field of view. for instance 17 coefficients if all temperature inputs and all

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A. Tempelhahn et al.: Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras 15

Table 3. Residual uncertainty after offset correction using different numbers and kinds of temperature inputs.

Temperature Residual temporal standard of Residual mean spatial standard Number of

inputs deviation σt of the mean corrected deviation σS of the corrected coefficients
pixel signal voltages (gray value) pixel voltages (gray value)
ϑfpa 541.9 27.9 4
ϑTP1 −TP3 46.3 10.5 7
ϑfpa ϑTP1 −TP3 39.8 9.8 10
ϑfpa ϑTPm · ϑTPn 37.8 9.3 14
ϑfpa , ϑTP1 −TP3 36.1 9.2 17
ϑfpa · ϑTP1 −TP3
ϑTPm · ϑTPn

possible corresponding cross-correlations are considered:

oV ,ij = (14)
3
X X 2
3 X 3
X
k m
c+ dk ϑfpa + el,m ϑTP1
+ fn ϑfpa · ϑTPn
k=1 l=1 m=1 n=1
+ g1 ϑTP1 · ϑTP2 + g2 ϑTP1 · ϑTP3 + g3 ϑTP2 · ϑTP3
+ g4 ϑTP1 · ϑTP2 · ϑTP3 .

As mentioned earlier, all temperature inputs show differ-

ent temporal behavior, which is used to separate them. An
ambient temperature change regime with temperature steps
from ±5 to ±20 K is applied to the camera inside the heat-
ing chamber, while the camera looks at a uniform black-
body with constant surface temperature. The camera temper-
ature, the sensor temperature as well as other control temper- Figure 8. Mean signal voltage and spatial standard deviation of
atures were captured periodically. Figure 7 depicts the ap- the entire sensor array after offset correction of the calibration data
plied temperature change over time and illustrates the rela- based on 17 correction coefficients. The mean value shows a con-
stant level except for minor peaks when the ambient temperature
tion of the mean signal voltage in relation to the different
changes. The spatial level changes slightly depending on the ambi-
temperatures. These relations contain all information about ent temperature.
the offset changes due to the ambient temperature change.
The coefficients of Eq. (14) were determined by applying the
least-square fit to a polynomial (Bevington and Keith Robin-
son, 1992) in the offset calibration data. The uncertainty due to the regression can be reduced using
Depending on the number and the kind of the used correc- a Planck-like approximation function based on four coeffi-
tion inputs, different correction uncertainty values in terms of cients rbf and o,
absolute and spatial deviation can be achieved. Table 3 shows
the comparison of different regression models based on the
deviation of the mean absolute deviation and the mean spa- r
Voffset,ij = + o, (15)
tial standard deviation of the pixel signal voltages over the b

sensor array. It should be noted that the more correction in- e( ϑobj,ij +273.15 ) −f
puts are used, the lower measurement uncertainty values can
be achieved. Figure 8 depicts the mean signal voltage and the
spatial standard deviation versus time of the calibration using especially for interpolation outside the supporting points
the offset correction function given by Eq. (14). (Budzier and Gerlach, 2015). The inverted function defines
the calculation rule to convert signal voltages into tempera-
ture values:
5.5 Radiometric calibration
The relation of the signal voltage Voffset,ij after ambient b
temperature compensation and the observed object temper- ϑobj,ij =   + 273.15. (16)
r
ature ϑobj can be estimated using a second-order polynomial. ln Voffset,ij −o +f

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16 A. Tempelhahn et al.: Shutter-less calibration of uncooled infrared cameras

Figure 9. Comparison of the correction of (a) the shutter-less and (b) shutter-based IR cameras for ambient temperature jumps from 25 to
45 ◦ C and back. The non-continuous shape of the shutter-based correction is due to the shutter procedure and the thermal drift occurring
afterwards. The residual measurement uncertainty of the shutter-less approach is significantly lower due to the continuous online correction.

6 Comparison of shutter-based and shutter-less References

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Edited by: J. Hollandt
Reviewed by: two anonymous referees

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