Temperature sensitivity and noise in thermoreflectance thermal imaging

Akin to any experimental system, thermoreflectance thermal imaging is not immune to different sources of noise. Although averaging the thermal images over long times can minimize the impact of the noise on the measurement, electrical, thermal and optical noises can still exist that can, subsequently, affect the accuracy of the temperature measurement. The goal of this work is to systematically look at the noise level in the thermal images obtained by visible wavelength thermoreflectance thermal imaging systems and to identify experimental parameters that can result in most accurate temperature measurements. In particular, we study the impact of the averaging time, selection of the objective lens, binning of the thermal images, signal level and time dependent noise effects in these systems.