Firefighters Helped by Holograph Technology: New Tool Sees Through Flames

Firefighters may have a new tool when it comes to seeing through the thick veils of smoke and walls of flame that make battling fires so dangerous: holograph technology. Researchers have developed a new imaging technique that uses infrared (IR) digital holography in order to capture potentially lifesaving details.

Although firefighters can see through smoke using current IR camera technology, these instruments are blinded by the intense infrared radiation emitted by flames. When a firefighter encounters conditions where fire is present, the sensitive detectors are overwhelmed, which makes them of limited use in the field. Yet now, scientists have employed a specialized lens-free technique which can cope with the flood of radiation when both smoke and flames are present.

So how exactly does this technology work? The new imaging system causes a beam of infrared laser light to widely disperse through a room. These IR rays can pass largely unhindered through both smoke and flames. However, it reflects off of any solid objects or people within the room. This information is then recorded by a holographic imager and then beamed to the user in the form of a live, 3-D movie of the room (See image below).

Unfortunately, this system isn't quite ready for practical application. First, the researchers have to make it ready for the field. They plan to make this technology more applicable by developing a portable tripod-based system that can house both the laser source and the IR camera. They also hope to provide fixed installations inside some buildings and tunnels.

It's not only firefighters that could benefit from this system, though. The researchers also are exploring the use of this technology in the biomedical field for non-destructive testing of large aerospace composite structures.

"Besides life-saving applications in fire and rescue, the potential to record dynamic scenes of a human body could have a variety of other biomedical uses," said Pietro Ferraro, one of the researchers, in a press release. "We are excited to further develop this technology and realize its application for saving and improving human life."

The new technology is detailed in a paper published in the journal Optics Express.