Hotspot is an infrared technology that is used in the sport of cricket. It is a part of Decision Review System in some countries like Australia and England. The technology is used to guide the umpires in making a decision related to caught behind and leg before wicket dismissals.
A hotspot is used by the third umpire during a review. When a leg before wicket is in question, then the umpires first confirm that there is no involvement of the bat. They thus resort to hotspot technology. In cases of a caught behind, the involvement of the bat can be clearly seen through a black and white video screen.
Hotspot works through an infrared imaging system. Two cameras are placed on either side of the ground. These infrared cameras work through a thermal imaging system. When a replay of an event is played, then it can be seen that when the ball passes the bat, if at all there is a contact established, then that area on the bat turns white. This is the hotspot. It turns so as there is a spike in temperature caused by the friction of the bat and ball. Furthermore, the computer that generates the images use a substraction method to generate a clear image. If there is no contact made, then no spot is made.
UltraEdge technology is the more commonly used technology then Hotspot owing to its cost effectiveness. However, hotspot often overcomes the drawbacks of UltraEdge, like ‘Phantom snick’ which shows a false positive error.
