Empirical mode decomposition for infrared thermography

In this paper, an empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method is applied to image processing in pulsed infrared thermographic testing. Through analysis of the Mode Function of an image EMD, characterisations of noise and uneven heating are given. Using the EMD method, noise and uneven heating are reduced at the same time and the contrast of the thermal image is improved. Finally, the result of pulsed infrared thermographic testing is given. Compared with other methods such as neighbourhood averaging, homomorphic filtering and background subtraction, this method is simple and effective to overcome noise and uneven heating in thermography.