The difference between imaging spectrometers and hyperspectral cameras

Imaging spectrometer is a new generation of sensors, which can acquire a large number of narrow band continuous spectral images of ground objects and obtain almost continuous spectral data of each pixel. It is mainly used in hyperspectral aerial remote sensing, agricultural and forestry pest monitoring and field laboratory research.

Hyperspectral camera is a new kind of imaging spectrometer, which is a multi-channel, continuous instrument with high spectral resolution to obtain image information. By combining the traditional space imaging technology with the surface object spectroscopy technology, it is possible to obtain the surface object reflection spectral image of dozens to hundreds of bands in the same area at the same time.

The high-end imaging spectrometer adopts the transmission-type bulk phase holographic diffraction grating, which has the characteristics of low stray light and low absorptivity in the visible to near infrared bands. Because the core part is sealed in glass or other transparent materials, it has a long life, easy to clean, scratch resistance, and is very suitable for a variety of harsh field applications.

The working mode of the imaging spectrometer is mainly push-sweep. In order to realize the scanning process, an external scanning platform is generally used to drive the spectrometer. Because the scanning platform is relatively bulky, and increases power consumption, which brings a lot of inconvenience to field work, the latest imaging spectrometer has canceled the scanning platform and changed to a built-in scanning design, which reduces the weight and energy consumption of the whole machine, and can be directly measured vertically down, which is more conducive to field use.

Hyperspectral camera is a camera made by using hyperspectral imaging technology. With a hyperspectral camera, we can measure thousands of spectra instead of a single spectrum. The collected spectrum forms an image of the target in such a way that each image pixel includes the complete spectrum. In this way, we can get answers to relevant questions based on the spectrum as well as the location, and select any location from the target to get information. Simply put, the image scanned by the hyperspectral camera is composed of tens of millions of spectra, and then enter the specific software, you can find the spectral curve of any point of the image, and then you can obtain the information you want through the position and spectral value of any point.