Thermographic inspection

Thermographic inspection refers to the nondestructive testing of parts, materials or systems through the imaging of the thermal patterns at the object's surface. Strictly speaking, the term thermography alone, refers to all thermographic inspection techniques regardless of the physical phenomena used to monitor the thermal changes. For instance, the application of a temperature sensitive coating to a surface in order to measure its temperature is a thermographic inspection contact technique based on heat conduction where there is no infrared sensor involved. Infrared thermography on the other hand, is a nondestructive, nonintrusive, noncontact mapping of thermal patterns or "thermograms", on the surface of objects through the use of some kind of infrared detector.