Abstract
Infrared imaging system has been applied widely in both military and civilian fields. Since the infrared imager has
various types and different parameters, for system manufacturers and customers, there is great demand for evaluating the
performance of IR imaging systems with a standard tool or platform. Since the first generation IR imager was developed,
the standard method to assess the performance has been the MRTD or related improved methods which are not perfect
adaptable for current linear scanning imager or 2D staring imager based on FPA detector.
For this problem, this paper describes an evaluation method based on the triangular orientation discrimination metric
which is considered as the effective and emerging method to evaluate the synthesis performance of EO system. To realize
the evaluation in field test, an experiment instrument is developed. And considering the importance of operational
environment, the field test is carried in practical atmospheric environment. The test imagers include panoramic imaging
system and staring imaging systems with different optics and detectors parameters (both cooled and uncooled). After
showing the instrument and experiment setup, the experiment results are shown. The target range performance is
analyzed and discussed. In data analysis part, the article gives the range prediction values obtained from TOD method,
MRTD method and practical experiment, and shows the analysis and results discussion. The experimental results prove
the effectiveness of this evaluation tool, and it can be taken as a platform to give the uniform performance prediction
reference.
