title: Target detection with a liquid-crystal-based passive Stokes polarimeter.
abstract: We present an imaging system that measures the polarimetric state of the light coming from each point of a scene. This system, which determines the four components of the Stokes vector at each spatial location, is based on a liquid-crystal polarization modulator, which makes it possible to acquire four-dimensional Stokes parameter images at a standard video rate. We show that using such polarimetric images instead of simple intensity images can improve target detection and segmentation performance.
authors.affiliation: Fresnel Institute, Unité Mixte de Recherche au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UMR CNRS 6133), Marseille, France. francois.goudail@fresnel.fr
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Goudail
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Terrier
authors.forename: Yoshitate
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takakura
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bigué
authors.forename: Frédéric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Galland
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: DeVlaminck