Thermal Hotspot/Coldspot Detection
Finding hot and cold spots with a U-Net
- Year
- 2024
- Kind
- Vision & edge
- Status
- Finished
- Built at
- Krishworks Technology & Research Labs
An inspection tool that finds hotspots and coldspots in thermal images of industrial components. A U-Net segments them, and a React interface draws their outlines and raises alerts.
A thermal camera records temperature, and a spot much hotter or colder than its surroundings is often the first sign of a fault. This tool runs each thermal image of an industrial component through a modified U-Net, which labels every pixel that belongs to a hotspot or a coldspot. The mask becomes outlined regions and bounding boxes drawn over the image. Regions past a threshold raise an alert, and a React and Tailwind CSS interface shows the heatmap, the outlines and the alerts together.
The problem
In a thermal image of industrial equipment, a spot much hotter or colder than its surroundings is often the first visible sign of a fault. This inspection tool finds those spots automatically. A U-Net segments hotspots and coldspots in the image, and a web interface draws their outlines and raises alerts.
How it works
- 01
Start from a thermal image
A thermal camera records heat instead of visible light, so each pixel holds a temperature reading. The tool takes these images of industrial components as its input.
- 02
Label every pixel with a U-Net
The image goes through a U-Net, a convolutional network designed for segmentation. Its encoder shrinks the image step by step to learn what each region is, and its decoder scales back up to full size, with skip connections carrying fine detail across so edges stay sharp. The output is a mask marking which pixels belong to a hotspot or a coldspot.
- 03
Turn the mask into regions
Each connected patch of the mask becomes a region with a contour and a bounding box. Drawn over the original image, the contour shows the exact shape of each hot or cold area, not just a box around it.
- 04
Flag outliers and show them
Regions that cross a set threshold raise an alert automatically. The React and Tailwind CSS interface shows the heatmap, the contour overlay and the alerts together, so an inspector can check each one.
Decisions
Segmentation, not just detection
A detector draws a box around a hot area. A segmentation model labels the pixels themselves, which gives the outline and size of each region. That outline is what the overlay draws for the inspector.