Remote measurements of thermal radiation are very important for analyzing the solar effect in various environments. This paper presents a novel real-time remote temperature estimation method by applying a deep learning-based regression method to midwave infrared hyperspectral images. A conventional remote temperature estimation using only one channel or multiple channels cannot provide a reliable temperature in dynamic weather environments because of the unknown atmospheric transmissivities. This paper solves the issue (real-time remote temperature measurement with high accuracy) with the proposed surface temperature-deep convolutional neural network (ST-DCNN) and a hyperspectral thermal camera (TELOPS HYPER-CAM MWE). The 27-layer ST-DCNN regressor can learn and predict the underlying temperatures from 75 spectral channels. Midwave infrared hyperspectral image data of a remote object were acquired three times a day (10:00, 13:00, 15:00) for 7 months to consider the dynamic weather variations. The experimental results validate the feasibility of the novel remote temperature estimation method in real-world dynamic environments. In addition, the thermal stealth properties of two types of paint were demonstrated by the proposed ST-DCNN as a real-world application.
Keywords: deep learning; hyperspectral; midwave infrared; regressor; remote surface temperature; thermal radiation; thermal stealth; weather variation.