Enhanced-Contrast Viewing of White-Hot Objects in Furnaces

An apparatus denoted a laser image contrast enhancement system (LICES) increases the contrast with which one can view a target glowing with blackbody radiation (a white-hot object) against a background of blackbody radiation in a furnace at a temperature as high as ≈1,500 °C. The apparatus utilizes a combination of narrowband illumination, along with band-pass filtering and polarization filtering to pass illumination reflected by the target while suppressing blackbody light from both the object and its background.