Polarized image of underwater light field contains rich information of and the targets strongly affected by the water inherent optical properties. We present a comprehensive analysis of the polarimetric images of a manmade underwater target with known polarization properties acquired by a full Stokes vector imaging camera in underwater environment. The effects of the camera’s parameters such as numerical aperture and orientation are evaluated. With the knowledge acquired in the analysis of such a forward polarimetric imaging process, a method for retrieval of the inherent optical properties of the water and the target polarization is explored.

Date Published: 19 May 2015
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9459, Ocean Sensing and Monitoring VII, 94590F (19 May 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2179500

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9459:
Ocean Sensing and Monitoring VII
Weilin W. Hou; Robert A. Arnone, Editor(s)