Efficient infrared nonuniform correction method considering optical attenuator and integration time

With the increasing number of optical attenuators and integration times in infrared imaging systems, this paper proposes an efficient nonuniform correction method that addresses drawbacks of complex operations and coefficient storage with traditional two-point nonuniform correction methods. First, the efficient nonuniform correction model was derived through the response model of the infrared imaging system with variable attenuators and integration times, which can achieve nonuniform correction of all attenuators and integration times using a correction equation. Based on the model, the efficient nonuniformity correction algorithm using a small number blackbody images was proposed. Finally, the experimental results show that the method has excellent nonuniformity correction performance. Compared with the two-point correction method, the maximum nonuniformity is reduced from 3.7% for the two-point method to 2.2% for the proposed method. In the meantime, the proposed method can greatly reduce the correction time and the number of blackbody temperature sampling points. Moreover, for the infrared imaging system with five integral times and three attenuators in this paper, the two-point method requires 30 correction coefficients, while the proposed method only requires eight correction coefficients. It reduces the required correction coefficients by about three times, achieving efficient and fast nonuniform correction.