The study on the MRTD measurement system of medical infrared thermal imager based on sub-pixel edge detection algorithm

MRTD (minimum resolvable temperature difference) is an important parameter to evaluate the infrared thermal imager. MRTD is not only related to the spatial resolution of the system, but also to many factors such as optical system, detector array and so on. The measurement technique and principle of the medical infrared thermal imager’s MRTD is deeply analyzed, and the MRTD measurement model is established in this paper. The MRTD measurement system of infrared thermal imager based on CCD imaging technology is designed. CCD is used to carry on the interpretation of temperature difference in this system instead of the human eye, which can avoid the effect of some factors on the subjective image quality evaluation, such as the contrast, the human interference flaw and so on. The sub-pixel edge detection algorithm is used to deal with the four-bar target image, which can effectively suppress the interface of the random noise on four-bar target image. The experimental results show that the MRTD testing accuracy of the system can reach 0.055°C. © 2016 SERSC.