New approach to remote gas-phase chemical quantification: selected-band algorithm

Abstract

We propose an algorithm for standoff quantification of chemical vapor plumes from hyperspectral imagery. The approach is based on the observation that the quantification problem can be easily solved in each pixel with the use of just a single spectral band if the radiance of the pixel in the absence of the plume is known. This plume-absent radiance may, in turn, be recovered from the radiance of the subset of spectral bands in which the gas species is transparent. This “selected-band” algorithm is most effective when applied to gases with narrow spectral features, and are therefore transparent over many bands. We also demonstrate an iterative version that expands the range of applicability. Simulations show that the new algorithm attains the accuracy of existing nonlinear algorithms, while its computational efficiency is comparable to that of linear algorithms.