Patent ID: 7262414

Claim:
A system for remote sensing and detection of chemical target contaminants at a surface, comprising: (a) a near infrared irradiation source that includes: a plurality of near infrared lamps mounted on and substantially equally spaced around a ring shaped fixture, each of said lamps including a parabolic reflector, wherein source emission from each lamp is generated by a halogen lamp that is positioned on foci of its reflector thereby collimating the emission beam of each lamp; and a plurality of optical filters equal in number to said lamps, each filter mounted in front of a corresponding reflector to exclude middle infrared emissions, and wherein the filtered beams from said lamps are projected and superimposed onto irradiated sample located at a fixed distance normal to the central axis of said ring shaped fixture; (b) an infrared mirror to direct thermal luminescence from the irradiated sample; (c) a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer to receive and process the thermal luminescence from the infrared mirror into thermal luminescence data; and (d) a Michelson interferometer to produce interferograms from the thermal luminescence data.