Key technologies such as real-time signal processing algorithms and hardware structure intended for driving a 320×240 infrared focal plane arrays (IRFPA) are presented here. Owing to the response of the IRFPA is instable with time, an adaptive two point correction (ATPC) algorithm was introduced in which the coefficients were updated accoding to a shutter image as the target. In addition, the real-time processing for plateau equalization (PE) is difficult although the infrared image can be enhanced effectively. In this article, PE algorithm was optimized and simplified by a loop-up table in which the size was limited by the maximum and minimum values in the frame. Therefore, the calculating numbers and requirement of memory were reduced greatly. A real-time infrared system structure based on field programmable gate array (FPGA) was introduced, in which two synchronous random access memortes (SDRAM) were used as frame buffer. In this article, the structure of the system and the software realization of the ATPC and PE were described in details. Meanwhile, the infrared images before and after the process of ATPC method were shown here as well as images with different Plateau values. These results suggested that, for a 320×240 IRFPA, the system works well in the 60 Hz frame rate and 50 MHz system clock. Furthermore, the infrared images were improved significantly and the requirement for real signal processing was achieved consequently.