Thermography spatial resolution enhancement by non-rigid registration with visible imagery

Over the last decade Carbon-Fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) have become increasingly important in industry and consumer oriented products due to their physical robustness and shape adaptivity. Defect localization and characterization is key to assuring the quality and durability of CFRPs. Active thermography has become an important non-invasive technology for the detection of hidden defects within CFRP materials. However current active thermographers exhibit resolutions of only up to 640 × 512 pixels, whereas visible spectrum imagers routinely have resolutions of 10 megapixels and higher. We therefore propose a fusion of active thermography and visible imagery data, capable of producing higher-resolution thermography images based on the physical boundaries in the visible domain. Our approach handles the disparity between the two imagers without the need for stereo or individual calibration.