New Features for Thermal Camera Core

BAE Systems has enhanced the capabilities of its TWV640 thermal camera core, designed for makers of thermal imaging solutions for defense, space, and commercial markets. 

The technology is used in security and surveillance, firefighting vision systems, automotive cameras, and more.

TWV640, a 640X480 thermal camera core, is a commercially available, uncooled thermal camera core, using 12-micron pixels compared to the standard 17-micron focal plane. This can reduce optics sizes by 50% and decrease optics cost by 20%.

The TWV640 is powered by BAE Systems’ Athena™ 640 focal plane array, an uncooled long wave infrared microbolometer. The upgraded features include:

• Contrast enhancement to provide improved imagery detail.
• Patent-pending spotlight mode to enable a picture-in-picture style image through a customizable region of contrast enhancements that do not degrade the sharpness of the image in the remainder of the frame.
• Field pixel kill to automatically substitute degraded pixels, making them virtually undetectable.
• And Improved Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference (NETD) to more accurately identify objects and threats within a scene, particularly within degraded environments and/or at longer ranges.

The these improvements allow for a more flexible and customizable image. The thermal camera core enables users to pick out threats at a long distance that are only a few pixels large.

The technology captures clear, complete images with lower temporal noise in the most visually challenging conditions including heavy fog, smoke, dust, haze, and darkness. 

This is useful to a broad range of applications for security, firefighting, targeting, thermography, and more.

BAE Systems’ Athena product line of high performance thermal camera cores has customizable settings, a software development kit, graphic user interface and display drivers, making it easy to configure based on mission needs.

“By further enhancing our imaging technology, we are continuing to provide our customers in the U.S. and abroad the superior imagery and customizable features they expect from BAE Systems,” said Robyn Decker, director of Sensor Solutions at BAE Systems.

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