Polarization Imaging

Advances in sensing technology enable acquisition of a large amount of information from the physical world. Vision techniques have played a key role in information sensing, but with a limitation that most vision systems can only perceive partial information beyond the visible spectrum. For instance, one cannot perceive the information carried by a polarized light since human vision systems are not sensitive to polarization. On the other hand, however, some marine and terrestrial animals and insects demonstrate their abilities to sense and utilize polarized lights to navigate, locate, and hunt for prey in their daily activities. Polarization is a unique characteristic of transverse wave, which is the asymmetry phenomenon of vibration direction and propagation direction. Comparing with conventional image techniques, the polarization imaging technique can detect the polarization information of targets, which will be beneficial to subsequent applications, such as target detection, recognition and identification. This chapter will focus on the principle of polarization imaging and its applications, then discuss the factors that affection polarization imaging and the method to reduce errors.