Thermal Infrared Detection of Aerosolized Bacterial Spores

Protection of fixed sites from biological or chemical (CB) aerosol plume attacks depends on early warning and confirmatory evidence to provide time and information to take the appropriate mitigating actions. An effective sensing system requires continuous, autonomous, and rapid coverage of large surrounding areas. Most qualitative CB sensors used for identification purposes are too expensive or too slow to deploy in the quantities needed for continuous coverage of an area large enough to provide sufficient monitoring. This Phase II effort is directed at lowering the cost of deploying aerosolized bacterial spore protection, while simultaneously adding the capability of automated intruder alerts. The research effort will investigate other bands besides LWIR, study moving the algorithms to moving platforms, and determine if ranging capability can be added to a single thermal imager.