We report an experimental implementation of long-range polarimetric imaging through fog over kilometric distance in real field atmospheric conditions. An incoherent polarized light source settled on a telecommunication tower is imaged at a 1.3 km distance with a snapshot polarimetric camera including a birefringent Wollaston prism, allowing simultaneous acquisition of two images along orthogonal polarization directions. From a large number of acquisitions datasets and under various environmental conditions (clear sky/fog/haze, day/night), we compare the efficiency of using polarized light for source contrast increase with different signal representations (intensity, polarimetric difference, polarimetric contrast,...). With the limited-dynamics detector used, a maximum fourfold increase in contrast was demonstrated under bright background illumination using polarimetric difference image.
OCIS codes:(110.0113) Imaging through turbid media; (110.5405) Polarimetric imaging; (010.7295) Visibility and imaging; (110.4280 Noise in imaging systems).http://dx
We address an experimental Stokes imaging setup allowing one to explore the polarimetric properties of a speckle light field with spatial resolution well beyond the speckle grain scale. We detail how the various experimental difficulties inherent to such measurements can be overcome with a dedicated measurement protocol involving a careful speckle registration step. The setup and protocol are then validated on a metallic reference sample, and used to measure the state of polarization (SOP) of light in each pixel of highly resolved speckle patterns (>2000 pixels per speckle grain) resulting from the scattering of an incident coherent beam on samples exhibiting different polarimetric properties. Evolution of the SOP with spatial averaging and across adjacent speckle grains is eventually addressed.
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