Processing of line-scan radiometric data at recording speeds

A high-speed microprocessor-based system has been constructed for enhancing data obtainable from radiometric scanning devices. The data is digitized, processed, and then converted back to analog form at recording speeds, resulting in a much higher overall throughput compared to previous enhancement systems that involved general-purpose computers. The processor replaces a minicomputer facility that took approximately 50 times longer in time to achieve similar results. The algorithm presented here involves a moving average filter and a density slicer to aid in manually contouring water-temperature maps obtained from a thermal infrared scanner.