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The new imaging system developed in our laboratory facilitates the solutions of problems otherwise difficult to remedy. In this lecture, the progressive steps taken for building our new diagnostic tool are explained, followed by a description of the system and our data processing methods. Some of the results obtained by using the device are presented. The system design was directed to incorporation of off-the- shelf components with several newly fabricated units in order to overcome limitations in existing infrared (IR) imaging systems. In the new IR imaging system which recently became operational, four high-speed IR camera units are lined up to a single (reflective) optical unit having three spectral beam splitters. This permits simultaneous framing of four geometrically (pixel-to-pixel) identical images of the same object in respective spectral bands. The multispectral imaging by the camera is activated either by the internal clock (at a rate over 1,800 frames/sec) or an external signal such as pulses generated by an encoder. Unique features incorporated in the system include: independent variation of the framing rate and the exposure period in terms of time period (as short as 30 microsecond(s) ec) or the number of external pulses; control of the total number of images to be obtained per event from successive cyclic processes. The new device is applied to 'quantitative imaging' of rapidly reacting events/objects, e.g. determination of temporal and spatial variations of the thermochemical characteristics. Thermal objects, which typically involve a reactor wall and a gaseous mixture in front, are studied by obtaining the high-speed digital readout from the corresponding pixels of: two wall images in separate wavebands and two mixture images in other bands, i.e., total of four matrices of digital output at a time. The results are processed by the conventional two-color method and a new dual-band spectrometric algorithm.
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