Calibration, Measurement and Error Analysis of Optical Temperature Measurement via Laser Induced Fluorescence

This paper describes a measurement device for optical temperature measurement. The temperature measurement is based on light induced fluorescence, and hence the device is partly physical and partly theoretical in nature. Rather that estimating a single calibration curve for the measurement, as is the norm with optical measurement, we perform the calibration pixel-wise, which accounts for systematic non-uniformity over the images and measurement cell. With this approach, the measurement is less susceptible to gross outliers. A measurement device can hardly be called such, if the measurement is not accompanied by a measure of its accuracy. We therefore undertake the error propagation throughout the theoretical portion of the measurement device, which leads to a measure of the accuracy of the optical temperature measurement. The analysis not only gives insight into the measurement process, but facilitates the amelioration of the experimental apparatus.