Advanced thermal imaging system for tank sights

A new second generation advanced thermal imager, which can be used for battle tank sight has been developed in Korea. The IR optics has dual field of views such as 2.67×2° in NFOV and 10×7.5° in WFOV. This system uses a 480×6 TDI HgCdTe detector, operating in the 8-12μm wavelength, made by Sofradir. In order to correct non-uniformity of detector array, the two point correction method has been developed by using the thermo electric cooler. Additionally, to enhance the image of low contrast and improve the detection capability, the new technique of histogram processing has been proposed. Through these image processing techniques, we obtained the high quality thermal image.