Comparative study of the best achievable contrast in scalar, Stokes and Mueller images

François Goudail (1) , Arnaud Bénière (1, 2) , Mehdi Alouini (3) , Daniel Dolfi (2)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Scop
2 Thales Research and Technology [Palaiseau]
3 Photonique et Lasers

We compare the relative performance of different active polarimetric imaging architectures for target detection applications. We show that if the noise that affects the measurements is additive and if the only relevant parameter is the contrast between an object of interest and a background with different Mueller matrices, the most efficient imaging architecture consists in acquiring a single intensity image while optimizing the illumination and analysis states of polarization.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

François Goudail, Arnaud Bénière, Mehdi Alouini, Daniel Dolfi. Comparative study of the best achievable contrast in scalar, Stokes and Mueller images. API'09 - First NanoCharM Workshop on Advanced Polarimetric Instrumentation,, 2009, Palaiseau, France. ⟨10.1051/epjconf/20100504003⟩. ⟨hal-00749875⟩