Enhancing a Mid-Wave Infrared Fourier Transform Hyperspectral Imager for Explosions

Capturing reliable hyperspectral imager data at a meaningful frame rate for explosions and other fast-changing scenes is not possible in the mid-wave infrared region under traditional sensor operating configurations and processing techniques, which typically have frame rates on the order of 0.5–2.0 Hz. To combat these shortcomings, the scene acquisition parameters were tailored for explosions and a new method for processing optical signatures of fast transient scenes with Fourier-transform infrared hyperspectral imagers was developed. For this technique, the instrument was first configured to collect asymmetric interferograms while optimizing the number of measurement points on the short side of the interferogram. Additionally, pixel-wise zero path distance offset and phase corrections were applied to the interferograms, a reduced spectral resolution of 8 cm−1 was selected, and the window size was narrowed to 32 × 64 pixels while using a lens with a wide field of view. The smooth offset correction for scene change artifacts was then applied in post-processing to address any remaining artifacts in the Fourier-transformed spectra. These procedures yielded a 29× increase in frame rate and significant improvements in spectra fidelity. This work makes reliable field calibrations and measurements of explosions with Fourier-transform infrared hyperspectral imagers more achievable than before.