Considering the existence of edge effect caused by the cut surface of struts or sintering points will affect the actual radiative transfer process in metallic foams, a three-layer structure model is constructed to obtain their spectral radiative properties. Using the double-thickness model for reference, the real spectral radiative properties of metallic foams are calculated based on transmittance spectra. To verify the feasibility of this method, transmittance spectra of nickel foams with different cell sizes and thicknesses are measured by FTIR spectrometer system in the near infrared band. Through comparing extinction coefficients obtained by traditional single-layer structure model and the three-layer structure model proposed in this paper, it is found that extinction coefficient will be underestimated by the latter method, while the deviation can reach 13% for 20ppi nickel foam and 8% for 40ppi nickel foam. Then absorption coefficient and scattering coefficient are calculated by a prediction model with parameters corrected. Based on this method, temperature influence on extinction coefficient of nickel foam is studied from 293 K to 773 K and it is found that extinction coefficient decreases with temperature in the researched band while the maximum changing rate is 2.1% in the researched band. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.