Cheapest Thermal Cameras for R&D

[Shaz]

Can Anyone suggest the cheapest thermal imaging sensor for research and development purpose (specifically for imaging humans for studying the skin temperature)? basically I am asking regarding some thermal camera module that can be assembled with arduino/freeduino/other,  to obtain thermal images. The existing commercial ones are very expensive to be procured by students working independently. The basic goal is to design a system that can capture thermal images and provide them in standard image format for further image processing.

[Shaz]

Can you please be more specific as I am new to this study and still in exploration phase.

[plesa]

Cheapest infrared camera with 320x240
http://www.thermal.com/products/compactpro/
Mike did review and teardown

[joe-c]

Cheapest infrared camera with 320x240
http://www.thermal.com/products/compactpro/

this camera is a bad choose. Or is the "patent pattern" gone?

for 500 + shipping you get a Thermal Expert Q1 with 384x288 Resolution and much less noise.

But i think a hacked E4 is a better choose for this case. Resolution 320x240, very good digital filters, Visual camera, full calibrated temperatures and a lot of Camera supported Measurements.
And with the PC you can download the images. and there is a Network mode, with that you can download a full thermal frame to pc (4 sec. per frame), this frame could be directly analyzed and/or stored.