Method and apparatus for scanning and for electronic processing of thermal pictures

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The objects of the present invention are achieved by providing that one inventive characteristic feature is that the scanning speed is selected at right angles to the line direction so that every line becomes scanned anew by way of the following element in picture direction.
If now the scanning in picture direction is made slower, the intermediate spacing of the detector elements can be covered during the following line scanning procedure.
This has the decisive advantage that the line structure of the picture substantially disappears.
According to a further concept of the present invention, the reproduction is carried out through an LED array whereby every detector element has an LED associated therewith that is supplied or energized by way of a corresponding amplifier array.
Inventively, the LED array of the detector arrangement should be arranged geometrically; accordingly, the ratio of LED area to the intermediate spaces should be the same as the area of the detector elements to the associate intermediate spaces.
If now the outputs of several points of the detector elements are connected in parallel, simultaneously several light-emitting diodes are supplied or energized parallel with the integral signal voltage; this means that the geometric resolution becomes reduced considerably though the thermal sensitivity rises correspondingly.
By way of this measure, the geometric resolution can accordingly be interchanged with the thermal resolution and the picture can be processed optimally according to its structure thereof.
While during the interconnection of several elements, there occurs a reduction of resolution only in picture direction and hence an increase of the thermal sensitivity, principally the same effect can be attained in line direction when the electronic band width of the subsequent amplifiers becomes correspondingly reduced.
If, for example, three detector elements are combined, the electronic band width is to be reduced to one-third with the result that the resolution is reduced to one-third and thermal sensitivity is raised by square root 3 in line direction additionally to the enhancement of factor 3 in picture direction, that means overall sensitivity by 3