Measuring high-resolution thermographic images
requires accurate radiometric calibration (assignment of tem-
perature to measured value) of the camera to the optics used.
The lenses in particular have a significant influence on this
calibration. Infrared (IR) cameras without automatic detection of
the attached lens are prone to errors when selecting the correct
calibration range after a manual lens change. In order to address
this problem, a reliable and user-friendly approach is introduced
to minimize errors due to lens mix-ups or incorrect operation by
the customer and during in-house calibration. This is achieved
by developing a system for automatic lens identification on
thermographic cameras. To this end, contactless and contact-
based variants of lens-body data transmission are researched
and evaluated to application-specific criteria. Functional tests of
a contactless radio-frequency identification (RFID) solution de-
livered very reliable data transmission results and demonstrated
the possibility to incorporate the method in a prototype.
Index Terms—Thermography, Infrared, Automatic lens iden-
tification, Lens-body-interface, Camera-lens-communication.