Method and device for monitoring of a heap of material

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon instructions for implementing a method, when executed on a device having processing capabilities, the method for monitoring a heap of material, the method comprising:

• defining, in a video stream of a scene captured by a thermal camera, a region of interest covering the heap of material;
• determining, from a video frame of the video stream, a reference spatial property of the heap of material from pixel data within the region of interest, wherein the spatial property is a measure of a spatial frequency of thermal image data;
• setting a spatial property threshold in relation to the reference spatial property;
• adjusting the region of interest such that regions in the video stream exhibiting a sample spatial property above the spatial property threshold are included by the region of interest;
• monitoring, over time and within the region of interest, a temperature measure in the video stream;
• and
• upon the temperature measure exceeding a predetermined threshold, generating an alarm event.

A device for monitoring a heap of material, the device comprising:

• circuitry configured to execute:
• a region of interest function configured to, in a thermal video stream of a scene captured by a thermal video camera, define a region of interest covering the heap of material;
• a reference spatial property setting function configured to:
• from pixels within the region of interest of a video frame of the thermal video stream, determine a spatial property of the heap of material, wherein the spatial property is a measure of a spatial frequency of thermal image data;
• and
• set the determined spatial property as a reference spatial property;
• and
• set a spatial property threshold in relation to the reference spatial property;
• a region of interest adjusting function configured to:
• determine a respective sample spatial property for regions in the thermal video stream, and
• adjust the region of interest such that regions in the thermal video stream exhibiting a sample spatial property above the spatial property threshold are included by the region of interest;
• and
• a temperature monitoring function configured to:
• over time and within the region of interest, monitor a temperature measure in the video stream, and
• upon the temperature measure exceeding a predetermined threshold, generate an alarm event.