Pyradi: an open-source toolkit for infrared calculation and data processing

Abstract

Electro-optical system design, data analysis and modelling involve a significant amount of calculation and processing. Many of these calculations are of a repetitive and general nature, suitable for including in a generic toolkit. The availability of such a toolkit facilitates and increases productivity during subsequent tool development: “develop once and use many times”. The concept of an extendible toolkit lends itself naturally to the open-source philosophy, where the toolkit user-base develops the capability cooperatively, for mutual benefit. This paper covers the underlying philosophy to the toolkit development, brief descriptions and examples of the various tools and an overview of the electro-optical toolkit. The toolkit is developed as a cooperative effort between the CSIR, Denel SOC and DCTA. The project, available on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/pyradi, is managed in accordance with general practice in the open source community.