Recommended professions for invisible spectrum enthusiasts

[Avalon]

Hello. I'm thinking of continuing studying since my current profession offers little job opportunities and isn't what interests me most. I'm interested in natural sciences, physics, electromagnetism and materials engineering, though my weakness is complex mathematics. What professions would you recommend involving at least little invisible spectrum imaging, photography?

Best known example for me is technical imaging of art works since almost all EM spectrum can be used for investigation of cultural heritage, that's what I plan to do as an amateur with paintings. Unfortunately there is little demand for such specialists. Then I know multispectral imaging is important in astrophysics, product quality inspection, medical imaging. What else there is in relatively high demand? I plan to study in Lithuania and travel to work in Ireland.

[aphalo]

Hi!

 

Your question is not an easy one... A short answer is, when thinking about choosing a career, put a lot of weight in what you enjoy doing. It is much easier to succeed when you enjoy and have fun doing your work. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine how working in a profession will be in practice.

 

One field that is growing is precision agriculture. Hyperspectral imaging with drones is starting to be used to diagnose crop health, water and mineral nutrient requirements. Some farmers' advisors sell nowadays such services to farmers. This is also used in crop breeding as part of what is called "plant phenotyping" both in the field and in greenhouse conditions. Systems with spectral sensors mounted on farm machinery for locally deciding fertilizer application are starting to appear. There is a lot of room for improvement in farm management using these approaches that mainly attempt to reduce the spatial scale at which the compromise between high production by addition of fertilizer and pesticides vs. pollution are managed. At short distances thermal imaging can be used to decide when to water a crop. (This is not about light, but there have been even attempts to detect in the field which patches of plants are being eaten by insects by "smelling" the organic volatile compounds that plants emit, and then spraying only those plants instead of the whole field. This was done by mounting a gas chromatograph on the tractor. Another off-topic example: in the Netherlands they are using robots to grafts tomato plants in greenhouses and for harvesting tomatos and cut flowers like roses. The first time I saw a video of a robot doing the grafting I was astonished how it was going autonomously through the process of cutting scion and stock, previously choosing them, putting them together and them tying them, and then moving to the next plant...)

 

Remote forest inventory with spectral imaging used to remotely identify plants species is already in commercial use. LIDAr is also used to estimate timber volume. Hyperspectral imaging has for some years been used also to locate fields of plants grown for drug production in remote regions (tropical forests and mountains) as well as for assessing the mineral richness of ore in mines and deciding where to dig next. The spectral signature can be used to identify plant species and chemical composition remotely.

 

At the larger scale of remote sensing a thing that is being developed or at early stages of implementation is the assessment photosynthesis based on the sunlight-induced chlorophyll fluorescence as measured remotely (even by satellites). This is challenging but there seems to be progress.

 

Almost everything I mentioned above is based on VIS and NIR, except for thermography that goes a bit farther into the IR. With respect UV I know some people who are trying/have tried to use UV induced fluorescence to asses accumulation of phenolics on plants' leaves epidermis. Accumulation of phenolics in leaves can be important as a tool for diagnosys of crop health vs. stress. Not yet using imaging, but there are optical sensors using UV-A induced flourescence to estimate the concentration flavonoids (indirectly using chlorophyll inside the leaf as a sensor of how much UV penetrates the epidermis by measuring the flourescence). Methods have been developed also to optically assess ripeness of for example grapes where the phenolic content can predict the quality of wine. Again, systems to optically assess ripeness of fruits, tomatos, etc., are key to the development of robotics systems for selective harvesting in horticulture and fruticulture.

 

I am a plant photobiologist, agronomist by training, and I have been able to use both photography and spectrometry throughout my research and teaching career, and have had a lot of fun with it. Obvisouly there must be similar developments to those I mention above in other fields. My guts feeling is that automation of farming and horticulture will open a niche for those who combine an understanding of biology, physics and various types of sensors including imaging ones. I am surely biased, as these are things I find myself very interest. I do not know how much automation and precision farming is being used in Ireland at this moment.

 

Even if none of this is of direct interest to you, I hope it can help show that in most professions one can find niches combining different interests, if one thinks broadly from the perspective of a given discipline how to fit ones interests and background experience to achieve something new. If the combination of background and interests is unique and you can imagine something to do that those working in a field find difficult or do not even imagine as possible. This can give a chance to find a good job that is also fun.

[Andy Perrin]

I would think adequate math knowledge will be needed for almost anything you want to do, especially linear algebra and statistics (and a little calculus). 

[Avalon]

Thanks aphalo for the comprehensive answer. 

 

13 hours ago, Andy Perrin said:

I would think adequate math knowledge will be needed for almost anything you want to do, especially linear algebra and statistics (and a little calculus). 

Well I was good enough at simpler math, geometry. But I'm not sure I could handle advanced mathematics nor it interests me. As far as I know artwork investigation doesn't involve math at all, but it is important to understand electromagnetism, how it interacts with various materials, photography skills and heritage history. Specialists I know have studied art history and had optical physics courses abroad.

[Andy Perrin]

7 hours ago, Avalon said:

artwork investigation doesn't involve math at all

I would say that depends very much on what kind of work you are doing. Anything that involves image enhancement will have a big computational and mathematical component, unless you restrict yourself to using only software written by other people. But that limits you a lot! 
 

Nearly all the work I do (for example, recovering ghost signs, enhancing gravestones, etc) involves a great deal of math.

 

Understanding any kind of physical (including optical) phenomena can also require a substantial amount math, depending how deeply you want to understand things. For simple photography purposes, only algebra is really needed, but the more you want to understand how light interacts with matter, the bigger the mathematical requirements.
 

Anyhow there are a wide range of jobs and for sure some of them will not need as much math. 

[rfcurry]

I have sold many UV bandpass filters to the US military. They use them in missile detection research, camouflage work, etc. I would think that any GIS work in mineral exploration, petroleum exploration, would use UV. Create your own niche. How about non-destructive testing? Good luck.