Looking beyond smoke and flames. A challenge for people safety, met thanks to Digital Holography at 10.6 um

Experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the capability of infrared bolometers-digital holography (IR-DH) to look beyond curtains of smoke and flames. In particular, holographic imaging of small objects and alive people has been achieved through smoke and flames generated in safely way in laboratory and the results have been compared with white light images and the vision obtainable with thermographic techniques. From the results, is apparent that only holographic imaging is able to discard the unwanted radiation, and images of human targets are obtained behind the flames with no blind areas. For these reasons we claim that Digital Holography at far infrared can pave the way for a new kind of imaging device which can help fire departments to coordinate the rescue operations and to operate safely in case of fire accidents.