Active backscattered optical polarimetric imaging of scattered targets

Abstract

The imaging potential of efficient optical polarimetric techniques, for active imaging through scattering media has been studied. Specifically, the depolarization of backscattered polarized laser light, based on the Mueller-matrices formalism, has been investigated. The experimental results indicate clearly that, scattered photons from disperse media maintain a high degree of linear polarization (DOLP). As a result, image quality and target recognition can be improved significantly. In addition, experimental evidence is presented where scattered light exhibits higher retention of the original polarization with increasing scatterer concentration, within a range of observations.