BAE Systems Unveils Improved TWV640 Thermal Camera Core

BAE Systems has unveiled enhanced capabilities for the TWV640 thermal camera core used in security, surveillance, firefighting vision systems, and automotive cameras.

The TWV640 is powered by BAE Systems’ Athena 640 focal plane array, an uncooled long wave infrared microbolometer.

The upgraded features include contrast enhancement for improved image detail, a patent-pending spotlight mode that enables a customizable region of contrast enhancements without degrading image sharpness elsewhere, field pixel kill for automatic substitution of degraded pixels, and improved Noise Equivalent Temperature Difference (NETD) for more accurate object and threat identification, particularly in degraded environments and longer ranges.

These improvements allows for a more flexible and customizable image. The thermal camera core enables the ability to pick out threats at a long distance that are only a few pixels large.

The technology captures clear, complete images with lower temporal noise in the most visually challenging conditions including heavy fog, smoke, dust, haze, and darkness. This is invaluable to a broad range of applications for security, firefighting, targeting, thermography, and more.

TWV640—a 640X480 thermal camera core—was the first commercially available, uncooled thermal camera core on the market using 12-micron pixels, versus the standard 17-micron focal plane which can reduce optics sizes by 50% and decrease optics cost by 20%.