The Problem  Current infrared camera technology makes it difficult to identify points of interest due to:  Thermal and Visible Images are inconsistent  Thermal Images do not look similar to visible light images  Especially in low contrast images it can be difficult to see the “edges” E.g. Where is this man’s chin? costly-mold-testing-with-ogden-utah-infrared-home- inspections

This is how other people fixed this problem  Control Image  A visible light (VL) image taken using a separate VL camera built into the IR camera  E.g. FLIR ThermaCam® P65  Does not offer automatic alignment or merging of images  Laser Pointer  Laser allows user to manually point laser into area of interest  E.g. FLIR ThermaCam® E65  The laser is not visible in the IR spectrum  Problematic if there is a large hot or cold spot  Hard to identify exact area of interest

The Solution

Kirk R. Johnson, Thomas McManus, and John W. Pratten  Their solution  Combine both solutions  The title of the patent  Visible Light and IR Combined Image Camera with a Laser Pointer  This is new!  Offers automatic alignment of VL images and images corrected for parallax error  Can blend VL and IR images  Higher contrast => Allows for cheaper, higher quality IR imaging  Uses a laser pointer to identify area of interest as well as align the images

Results IR ImageVL ImageBlended Image (alpha)