Three-dimensional polarimetric integral imaging under low illumination conditions

Abstract

Conventional polarimetric imaging may perform poorly in photon-starved environments. In this Letter, we demonstrate the potential of integral imaging and dedicated algorithms for extracting three-dimensional (3D) polarimetric information in low light, and reducing the effects of measurement uncertainty. In our approach, the Stokes polarization parameters are measured and statistically analyzed in low illumination conditions through 3D-reconstructed polarimetric images with dedicated algorithms to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The 3D volumetric degree of polarization (DoP) of the scene is calculated by statistical algorithms. We show that the 3D polarimetric information of the object can be statistically extracted from the Stokes parameters and 3D DoP images. Experimental results along with a novel statistical analysis verify the feasibility of the proposed approach for polarimetric 3D imaging in photon-starved environments and show that it outperforms its two-dimensional counterpart in terms of SNR. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of novel optical experiments along with novel statistical analysis and dedicated algorithms to recover 3D polarimetric imaging signatures in low light.