Rapid 4-Stokes parameter determination via stokes filter

Abstract

A system for determining polarization profiles of points in a scene from video frames using Stokes parameters includes a scene having a region that emits scene light rays that correspond to the points in the scene, an optical chopper controller, a rotating Stokes filter wheel that includes five trigger holes, three rotating linear polarizers, a circular polarizer, and a reference screen, a color filter, a video camera having a video frame, and a computer system having a frame grabber apparatus. The scene light rays are transmitted through the Stokes filter and the color filter to the video camera. Images corresponding to the scene light rays are projected onto respective pixels in the video frame and recorded as two-dimensional (2-D) arrays, and the images corresponding to the scene light rays from four unique images, obtained from light transmitted consecutively through three linear polarizers and a circular polarizer of the rotating Stokes filter wheel, are used by programming in the computer system to calculate respective Stokes parameters of the points in the scene.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] The present invention may relate to applications having Ser. No. 10 / 822,355, filed Apr. 13, 2004, and Ser. No. 11 / 158,357, filed Jun. 20, 2005, which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.GOVERNMENT INTEREST [0002] The invention described here may be made, used and licensed by and for the U.S. Government for governmental purposes without paying royalty to us.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] 1. Field of the Invention [0004] The present invention generally relates to a system and method for rapidly determining Stokes parameters. [0005] 2. Background Art [0006] The Stokes method provides a seminal method for the determination of a state of polarization of a beam of light using measurable quantities. The Stokes method includes the process of measuring four intensities of the light beam. Each measurement corresponds to the intensity of the light beam after the light beam passes through each of four different filter system ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This approach significantly reduces temporal and spatial registration errors, enabling more accurate and rapid determination of polarization profiles in real-time, improving the precision of polarization measurements compared to conventional methods.

Problems solved by technology

However, the conventional approaches of using the Stokes parameters for acquiring polarization information from images have the deficiencies of sometimes having errors in temporal registration and in spatial registration.

The temporal registration errors occur because of the capture time differential to generate separate images in conventional approaches.

Spatial registration errors can occur when conventional approaches are used whenever the scene is imaged onto the image plane of the camera from different positions.

As such, the four images will be different, and spatial errors can occur.

Images