Imaging instrumentation near-infrared

Near-infrared chemical imaging (NIR-CI) refers usually to the hyperspectral imaging of samples using typically wavelengths from 0.9 to 2.5 pm (NIR region) and an FPA detector. There are some major methodical and instrumental differences between NIR and IR imaging. 

Near-infrared chemical imaging instrumentation is rugged and flexible, suitable for both the laboratory and the manufacturing environment. Therefore analysis methods developed in the laboratory can often be tailored for implementation near-line or at-line. NIR-CI is also a massively parallel approach to NIR spectroscopy, making the technique well suited for high-throughput applications. 

Lewis, E. N., DuBois, J. and Kidder, L. H. NIR imaging, instrumentation and its applications to agricultural and food engineering. In Near Infrared Spectroscopy in Food Science and Technology (Yukihiro Ozaki, W. Fred McClure, and Alfred Christy, eds), John Wiley Sons, in press. 

M. A. Franceschini et al., Multi-Channel Optical Instrument for Near-Infrared Imaging of Tissue, 1995 SPIE Conference,... 

Small, V. Fritz, A. Wetzel, D. (2006). Chemical imaging of intact seeds with NIR focal plane array assists plant hreeding. Vibrational Spectroscopy Vol.42, N.2, pp. 215-221 Sorensen, L.K. (2009). Application of reflectance near infrared spectroscopy for bread analyses. Food Chemistry Vol.113, pp. 1318-1322 Stark, E.K. Luchter, K. (2003). Diversity in NIR Instrumentation, in Near Infrared Spectroscopy. Proceeding oh the 11th International Conference. NIR Publication, Chichester, UK, pp. 55-66... 

Fig. 2.4 The (3 Pictoris system in near infrared light. The faint reflected light radiation from the debris disc is revealed after a very careful subtraction of the much brighter stellar halo. The outer part of the image shows the dust disc, as observed in 1996 with the ADONIS instrument on the ESO 3.6 m telescope the inner part of the image has been obtained with the NACO instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope. The newly detected source is more than 1,000 times fainter than (3 Pictoris, aligned with the disc, at a projected distance of eight times the Earth-Sun distance. Both parts of the image were obtained on ESO telescopes equipped with adaptive optics [30]...

In the visible, ground based telescopes provide the necessary instruments, with imaging cameras with a large field of view and sensitive high resolution spectrometers. Similar instruments are developed in the near infrared spectral region, that is well accessible from the ground, (see e.g. the instrument available at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) http //www.eso.org). 

An alternative approach for NIR hyperspectral imaging to the one described earlier is to use a Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectrometer. Since the design of FT-NIR microspectrometer is more similar to that of instruments... 

The facility near infrared camera (NIRC) was used on the W.M. Keck telescope for a series of science demonstration observations in March 1993. These observations have served to demonstrate that the telescope delivers excellent images and can hold those images for wedcs. The telescope tracking under autoguider control is commensurate with the image quality. The performance of the camaa is consistent with that expected for an instrument on a 10-m telescope. 

---