Japan Tobacco Inc.,Product Technology Development Div.,1-17-7, Yokokawa, Sumida-ku, Tokyo 130, Japan.;In intermittent puffing of a burning cigarette, the puff count is affected by its burning rate during puffing and between puffs. In order to clarify the influence that different puff volumes and various tobacco types have on cigarette burning rates, we developed an apparatus to measure the burning rate based on thermography. The apparatus determines cigarette burning rates by tracking the thermal contours near the char line detected by thermography. Except for five seconds after the initiation of puffing, the propagation of thermal contours produced by the apparatus closely matched the propagation of the char line scanned by a CCD camera. Designating the distance the thermal contour moved during five seconds after initiation of puffing as Lp and the distance moved during one entire puff cycle as L0, the length of a cigarette burned between puffs is defined as the difference between L0 and Lp. The burning patterns in a puff cycle during intermittent puffing were measured using this apparatus and we examined the influences of different puff volumes and tobacco types on the length of cigarettes burned. We also studied the relationship between the burning rates between puffs and static burning rates. The study showed that puff volumes mainly affected the length of a cigarette burned during puffing and tobacco types mainly affected the cigarette length burned between puffs. Although the burning rates between puffs were obviously different from that of static burning rates, they showed a close correlation.