Reflective Journal 6

Last week, an outside speaker from Titan Thermal Solution Sdn Bhd (TTS) was invited to give us a talk. As the name implies, this company specializes in thermal imaging technology. The speaker was none other than the executive director of TTS, Mr. Vivek Panicker. He started of his talk by explaining to us how important electronics systems are in our daily life and that almost every aspect of our modern lives needs us to interact with electronic systems in one form or another. He also stated that electronic systems are playing a major role in the development and advancement of technology. Electronics was in the beginning a part of electrical engineering and it was until the invention of the radio that the field of electronics diverges from the electrical field. The development in the field of electronics over the years has lead to components being much smaller than they were before which allows us to design circuits with can handle more operation and in a smaller size than before.

Mr. Vivek then explain that electronics plays a very important role in the industry or even in today's ICT era and is the catalyst that enhances production and productivity in industries as they heavily rely on them. Electronics are mainly divided into 5 major fields and they are consumer electronics, industrial electronics, defence electronics, communication electronics and information processing system and they are divided again into many other subunits such as medical electronics and imaging.

Next Mr. Vivek then gave us an overview on the imaging industry. There are a number of kinds of imaging and namely they are chemical imaging, digital imaging, geophysical imaging, medical imaging, molecular imaging, optical imaging, radar imaging and thermography (thermal imaging). He told us that thermal imaging was actually part of defence electronics which makes use of infra-red waves to produce an image. This kind of imaging is commonly known as "dirty" imaging systems as they require a lot of pre and post processing of the data before an actual image could be form.

The above is an example of a basic imaging system. A lens is use to capture the waves and then a sensor will translate this analog data into digital form which is then processed and enhanced by the ICs before it is displayed on a viewer. Thermal imaging is used widely in industries especially in maintenance, R&D as well as medical research.

Lastly, Mr. Vivek told us that there is no limit in electronics and what ever we want to achieve through electronics is possible and is only limited by our imagination.