title: Cramer-Rao lower bound for the estimation of the degree of polarization in active coherent imagery at low photon levels.
abstract: The degree of polarization (DOP) is an important tool in many optical measurement and imaging applications. We address the problem of its estimation in images that are perturbed with both speckle and photon noise, by determining the Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) when the illuminated materials are purely depolarizing. We demonstrate that the CRLBs are simply the sum of the CRLBs due to speckle noise and Poisson noise. We use this result to analyze the influence of different optical parameters on DOP estimation.
authors.affiliation: Physics and Image Processing Group, Fresnel Institute, UMR CNRS 6133, Ecole Généraliste d'Ingénieurs de Marseille, Domaine Universitaire de Saint-Jérôme, Marseille, France. philippe.refregier@fresnel.fr
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Réfrégier
authors.forename: Muriel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Roche
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Goudail