This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 9853, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and the Conference Committee listing.

The polarimetric properties of a material medium are summarized in the sixteen elements of its associated Mueller matrix. The quantities carrying specific information on the significant polarimetric features have to be defined on the basis of the analysis of the mathematical structure of Mueller matrices. It is found that any Mueller matrix can be parameterized through two retardance vectors and ten quantities that are invariant under dual retarder transformations. This parameterization leads to proper definitions of the retardance and depolarization properties, which together with the diattenuation and polarizance properties provide complete polarimetric characterization of the sample under consideration.

There are a number of interesting experimental and Monte Carlo results regarding the persistence of polarization in turbid media; however, there is not a good theoretical understanding of this phenomenon. These results include circular polarization memory in strongly scattering anisotropic media and the impact of polydisperse scatterers on the depolarization rate. In this work we use the spectrum of the discretized vector radiative transport equation to investigate to study circular depolarization in strongly scattering media.

Remote sensing of the refractive index of a target surface has important application for detection and classification tasks. In this paper, we introduce a modified pBRDF model with a diffuse scattering term and apply it in the development of a method to jointly estimate the refractive index, slope variance roughness and diffuse scattering parameter from a series of Stokes parameter measurements of a surface. This work is a significant extension of prior work involving degree-of-polarization (DOP) measurements. Numerical trials are presented that indicate diffuse scattering can significantly affect the surface parameter estimation and estimation accuracy improves considerably by including the diffuse component in the scattering model. We also illustrate that using Stokes measurements for the estimation provides more accuracy than using DOP measurements for a limited number of observations. The estimation approach is applied to Stokes and DOP measurements of several material surfaces published previously in the literature and the parameter estimation produces curves that have excellent correspondence with the measurement values.

We report a new publicly available radiative transfer (RT) code for numerical simulation of polarized light scattering in plane-parallel Earth atmosphere. Using 44 benchmark tests, we prove high accuracy of the new RT code, SORD (Successive ORDers of scattering^{1, 2}). We describe capabilities of SORD and show run time for each test on two different machines. At present, SORD is supposed to work as part of the Aerosol Robotic NETwork³ (AERONET) inversion algorithm. For natural integration with the AERONET software, SORD is coded in Fortran 90/95. The code is available by email request from the corresponding (first) author or from ftp://climate1.gsfc.nasa.gov/skorkin/SORD/ or ftp://maiac.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/SORD.zip

The mathematics of estimating overdetermined polarization parameters is worked out within the context of the inverse modeling of linearly polarized light, and as the primary new result the general solution is presented for estimators of the linear Stokes parameters from any number of measurements. The utility of the general solution is explored in several illustrative examples including the canonical case of two orthogonal pairs. In addition to the actual utility of these estimators in Stokes analysis, the pedagogical discussion illustrates many of the considerations involved in solving the ill-posed problem of overdetermined parameter estimation. Finally, suggestions are made for using a rapidly rotating polarizer for continuously updating polarization estimates.

Accurate multi-angle spectropolarimetry permits the detailed and unambiguous characterization of a wide range of objects. Science cases and commercial applications include atmospheric aerosol studies, biomedical sensing, and food quality control. We introduce the FlySPEX spectropolarimetric fiber-head that constitutes the essential building block of a novel multi-angle sensing system. A combination of miniaturized standard polarization optics inside every fiber-head encodes the full linear polarization information as a spectral modulation of the light that enters two regular optical fibers. By orienting many FlySPEX fiber-heads in any desired set of directions, a fiber bundle contains the complete instantaneous information on polarization as a function of wavelength and as a function of the set of viewing directions. This information is to be recorded by one or several multi-fiber spectrometers. Not only is this system flexible in the amount of viewing directions and their configuration, it also permits multiplexing different wavelength ranges and spectral resolutions by implementing different spectrometers. We present the design and prototyping for a FlySPEX fiber-head that is optimized for both polarimetric accuracy and commercial series production. We integrate the polarimetric calibration of each FlySPEX fiber-head in the manufacturing process.

Polarization spatial heterodyne interferometry (PSHI) allows for the development of compact, vibration insensitive, high spectral resolution sensors. Introducing the imaging qualities of a lenslet array extends the advantages of PSHI to imaging interferometers. The use of Savart plates enables a birefringent interferometer that obtains higher spectral resolution with fewer optical aberrations when compared to alternative designs. In this paper, we describe the design, construction, calibration and validation of a narrowband emission line imaging spectrometer (NELIS), based on Savart plates and liquid crystal polarization gratings, along with its associated theoretical model. This sensor is advantageous for spectral imaging in the areas of remote sensing, biomedical imaging and machine vision.

For some applications, the need for fast polarization acquisition is essential (if the scene observed is moving or changing quickly). In this paper, we present a new acquisition method for Bossa Nova Technologies’ full Stokes passive polarization imaging camera, the SALSA. This polarization imaging camera is based on “Division of Time polarimetry” architecture. The use of this technique presents the advantage of preserving the full resolution of the image observed all the while reducing the speed acquisition time. The goal of this new acquisition method is to overcome the limitations associated with Division of Time acquisition technique as well as to obtain high-speed polarization imaging while maintaining the image resolution. The efficiency of this new method is demonstrated in this paper through different experiments.

We describe an active polarimetric imager with laser illumination at 1.5 µm that can generate any illumination and analysis polarization state on the Poincar sphere. Thanks to its full polarization agility and to image analysis of the scene with an ultrafast active-contour based segmentation algorithm, it can perform adaptive polarimetric contrast optimization. We demonstrate the capacity of this imager to detect manufactured objects in different types of environments for such applications as decamouflage and hazardous object detection. We compare two imaging modes having different number of polarimetric degrees of freedom and underline the characteristics that a polarimetric imager aimed at this type of applications should possess.

Hyperspectral polarimetry is demonstrated to measure the spectrum and polarization state of a scene. This information is important to identify material properties for applications such as remote sensing and agricultural monitoring, among others. We report the design and performance of a ruggedized, field deployable Hyperspectral Polarimeter Imaging (HPI) system over the VIS to NIR range (450-800 nm). An entrance slit was used to sample a scene in a pushbroom scanning mode, sampling over a 30 degree vertical by 110 degree horizontal field of view. Furthermore, athermalized achromatic retarders were implemented in a channel spectrum generator to measure the linear Stoke vectors. This paper reports the mechanical and optical layout of the system and its peripherals. We present preliminary spectral and polarimetry calibration techniques as well as testing results in field environments.

A two meter inner diameter goniometer provides approximately 0.1° angular positioning precision for a series of spectral and polarimetric instruments to enable measurements of the directionality of polarized reflectance from soils in the laboratory, at 10° increments along the azimuth and zenith. Polarimetric imaging instruments to be mounted on the goniometer, with linear polarizers in rotators in front of each instrument, include broadband focal plane array imagers in the Visible band (Vis), Near InfraRed (NIR), Short Wave InfraRed (SWIR), and Long Wave InfraRed (LWIR) spectral bands, as well as a hyperspectral imager in the Vis through NIR. Two additional hyperspectral polarimetric imagers in the Vis through NIR, and SWIR, are to be mounted separately with angles measured by laser on the goniometer frame.

A highly calibrated imaging polarimeter can be complex, slow, or costly. Instead, it is possible to use a simpler system, using only rough angles of a polarization analyzer. Still, the accurate state of the system can then be algorithmically derived. The derivation is based on the observed data, although the Stokes vectors of the analyzed object are unknown a-priori. Such self-calibration requires modest redundancy of measurements and diversity of polarization in the field of view, that can often be met in practice.

For the sake of polarimetric accuracy, polarization imaging systems based on liquid crystal modulators often work at one given wavelength due to the strong chromatic properties of the liquid crystal retarders. This often requires the use of narrowband filters which reduces the amount of light in the system and thus the signal-to-noise ratio. For applications where the main parameter of interest is the target/background discriminability rather than polarimetric accuracy, spectral filtering may not be the best option. In this work, we investigate the impact of broadening the spectrum of the light entering the system on the discriminability performance of passive and active polarimetric systems. Through simulations, we show that broadening the bandwidth of the illumination can increase the contrast between two regions, as the increase of light flux compensates for the loss of polarimetric precision. Moreover, we show that taking into account the chromatic characteristics of the components of the imaging system can further enhance the contrast. We validate these findings through experiments in passive and active configurations, and demonstrate that the illumination bandwidth can be seen as an additional parameter to optimize polarimetric imaging set-ups.

We present experimental and simulation results for a laboratory-based forward-scattering environment, where 1 μm diameter polystyrene spheres are suspended in water to model the optical scattering properties of fog. Circular polarization maintains its degree of polarization better than linear polarization as the optical thickness of the scattering environment increases. Both simulation and experiment quantify circular polarization’s superior persistence, compared to that of linear polarization, and show that it is much less affected by variations in the field of view and collection area of the optical system. Our experimental environment’s lateral extent was physically finite, causing a significant difference between measured and simulated degree of polarization values for incident linearly polarized light, but not for circularly polarized light. Through simulation we demonstrate that circular polarization is less susceptible to the finite environmental extent as well as the collection optic’s limiting configuration.

Understanding the phenomenology of polarimetric data is necessary if we want to obtain the maximum benefit when we exploit that data. To first order, polarimetric phenomenology is driven by two things; the target material type (specular or diffuse) and the illuminating source (point (sun) or extended (body emission)). Polarimetric phenomenology can then be broken into three basic categories; ([specular material/sun source], [diffuse/sun], [specular/body]) where we have assigned body emission to the IR passband where materials are generally specular. The task of interest determines the category of interest since the task determines the dominant target material and the illuminating source (eg detecting diffuse targets under trees in VNIR = [diffuse/sun] category). In this paper, a specific case study for the important [diffuse/sun] category will be presented. For the reflective regime (0.3 – 3.0um), the largest polarimetric signal is obtained when the sun illuminates a significant portion of the material BRDF lobe. This naturally points us to problems whose primary target materials are diffuse since the BRDF lobe for specular materials is tiny (low probability of acquiring on the BRDF lobe) and glinty (high probability of saturating the sensor when on lobe). In this case study, we investigated signatures of solar illuminated diffuse paints acquired by a polarimetric hyperspectral sensor. We will discuss the acquisition, reduction and exploitation of that data, and use it to illustrate the primary characteristics of reflective polarimetric phenomenology.

As off-nadir viewing platforms become increasingly prevalent in remote sensing, material identification techniques must be robust to changing viewing geometries. Current identification strategies generally rely on estimating reflectivity or emissivity, both of which vary with viewing angle. Presented here is a technique, leveraging polarimetric and hyperspectral imaging (P-HSI), to estimate index of refraction which is invariant to viewing geometry. Results from a quartz window show that index of refraction can be retrieved to within 0.08 rms error from 875-1250 cm^-1 for an amorphous material. Results from a silicon carbide (SiC) wafer, which has much sharper features than quartz glass, show the index of refraction can be retrieved to within 0.07 rms error. The results from each of these datasets show an improvement when compared with a maximum smoothness TES algorithm.

Knowledge of the underwater light field is fundamental to determining the health of the world's oceans and coastal regions. For decades, traditional remote sensing retrieval methods that rely solely on the spectral intensity of the water-leaving light have provided indicators of marine ecosystem health. As the demand for retrieval accuracy rises, use of the polarized nature of light as an additional remote sensing tool is becoming necessary. For two weeks in December 2015, the NOAA NPP-VIIRS Calibration/Validation cruise continuously observed the polarized radiance of the ocean and the sky using a HyperSAS-POL system. Additionally, a full Stokes imaging polarimetric camera was used to acquire images and videos of the sea surface and sky during stations at coincident angles with HyperSAS-POL. Polarized remote sensing reflectance is computed for all viewing elevations present in the polarization images, and the results are compared to vector radiative transfer calculations.

The 1=∫² power law (where ∫ is spatial frequency) characterizes the spatial power spectrum of non-polarimetric images of outdoor scenes when averaged over an appropriately large ensemble. This empirical result has been repeatedly verified in diverse imaging applications. In this work we compare the ensemble-averaged power spectrum of radiance and polarized radiance images. Outdoor scenes have been imaged over the past three-years using JPL's Ground-based Multiangle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (Ground-MSPI)[1] at the University of Arizona (UA). Ground-MSPI is an eight-band spectropolarimetric camera mounted on a rotating gimbal to acquire pushbroom imagery of solar illuminated outdoor landscapes. This Ground-MSPI image library offers a unique opportunity to quantify the statistical trends between polarimetric and non-polarimetric measurements. From power spectrum analysis of 1,975 images in our collection we report that the magnitude of the 1=∫-exponent is lower for the polarized radiance image than the corresponding radiance image. This result quantifies the contrast mechanism difference for imaging polarimetry, indicates higher spatial frequency content in passive polarimetry of outdoor environments, and supports the assertion that polarimetry offers unique detection capabilities.

Polarization can be used to detect manmade objects on the ground and in the air, as it provides additional information beyond intensity and color. Skylight can be strongly polarized, so the detection of airplanes in flight requires careful consideration of the skylight degree and angle of polarization (DoLP, AoP). In this study, we detect poorly resolved airplanes (≥ 4 pixels on target) in flight during daytime partly cloudy and smoky conditions in Bozeman, Montana. We used a Polaris Sensor Technologies SWIR-MWIR rotating imaging polarimeter to measure the polarization signatures of airplanes and the surrounding skylight from 1.5 to 1.8 μm in the short-wave infrared (SWIR). An airplane flying in a clear region of partly cloudy sky was found to be 69% polarized at an elevation angle of 13° with respect to the horizon and the surrounding skylight was 4-8% polarized (maximum skylight DoLP was found to be 7-14% at an elevation angle of 50°). As the airplane increased in altitude, the DoLP for both airplane and surrounding sky pixels increased as the airplane neared the band of maximum sky polarization. We also observed that an airplane can be less polarized than its surrounding skylight when there is heavy smoke present. In such a case, the airplane was 30-38% polarized at an elevation angle of 17°, while the surrounding skylight was approximately 40% polarized (maximum skylight DoLP was 40-55% at an elevation angle of 34°). In both situations the airplane was most consistently observed in DoLP images rather than S0 or AoP images. In this paper, we describe the results in detail and discuss how this phenomenology could detect barely resolved aircrafts.

A key product of the global undisturbed/disturbed earth (GUIDE) program is the development of a soils database of broadband, hyperspectral, and polarized data. As a part of the GUIDE program, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) conducted a testing series involving a large variety of instrumentation at several sites at the Yuma Test Center (YTC) in fiscal year 2015 under the auspices of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (now the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency), generating approximately 17 terabytes of data. Most of this data, available through the ERDC, comprises hyperspectral polarimetric scientific data in the visible, near-infrared, shortwave infrared, and longwave infrared bands. As part of this testing series the performance of six handheld devices was characterized. We discuss the process of this data collection at YTC focusing on the polarimetric data, including the two handheld devices that relied on polarization for detection. Although some other polarization states discriminate soils better in some other wavelengths, for certain visible and near-infrared bands the Stokes S2 parameter provided the best discrimination.

A validated, polarimetric 3-dimensional simulation capability, P-MCScene, is being developed by generalizing Spectral Sciences’ Monte Carlo-based synthetic scene simulation model, MCScene, to include calculation of all 4 Stokes components. P-MCScene polarimetric optical databases will be generated by a new version (MODTRAN7) of the government-standard MODTRAN radiative transfer algorithm. The conversion of MODTRAN6 to a polarimetric model is being accomplished by (1) introducing polarimetric data, by (2) vectorizing the MODTRAN radiation calculations and by (3) integrating the newly revised and validated vector discrete ordinate model VDISORT3. Early results, presented here, demonstrate a clear pathway to the long-term goal of fully validated polarimetric models.

While active polarimeters have been shown to be successful at improving discriminability of the targets of interest from their background in a wide range of applications, their use can be problematic for cases with strong bandwidth constraints. In order to limit the number of performed measurements, a number of successive studies have developed the concept of partial Mueller matrix polarimeters (pMMPs) into a competitive solution. Like all systems, pMMPs need to be calibrated in order to yield accurate results. In this treatment we provide a method by which to select a limited number of reference objects to calibrate a given pMMP design. To demonstrate the efficacy of the approach, we apply the method to a sample system and show that, depending on the kind of errors present within the system, a significantly reduced number of reference objects measurements will suffice for accurate characterization of the errors.

Compact snapshot imaging polarimeters have been demonstrated in literature to provide Stokes parameter estimations for spatially varying scenes using polarization gratings. However, the demonstrated system does not employ aggressive modulation frequencies to take full advantage of the bandwidth available to the focal plane array. A snapshot imaging Stokes polarimeter is described and demonstrated through results. The simulation studies the challenges of using a maximum bandwidth configuration for a snapshot polarization grating based polarimeter, such as the fringe contrast attenuation that results from higher modulation frequencies. Similar simulation results are generated and compared for a microgrid polarimeter. Microgrid polarimeters are instruments where pixelated polarizers are superimposed onto a focal plan array, and this is another type of spatially modulated polarimeter, and the most common design uses a 2x2 super pixel of polarizers which maximally uses the available bandwidth of the focal plane array.

Channeled spectropolarimeters (CSP) measure the polarization state of light as a function of wavelength. Conventional Fourier reconstruction suffers from noise, assumes the channels are band-limited, and requires uniformly spaced samples. To address these problems, we propose an iterative reconstruction algorithm. We develop a mathematical model of CSP measurements and minimize a cost function based on this model. We simulate a measured spectrum using example Stokes parameters, from which we compare conventional Fourier reconstruction and iterative reconstruction. Importantly, our iterative approach can reconstruct signals that contain more bandwidth, an advancement over Fourier reconstruction. Our results also show that iterative reconstruction mitigates noise effects, processes non-uniformly spaced samples without interpolation, and more faithfully recovers the ground truth Stokes parameters. This work offers a significant improvement to Fourier reconstruction for channeled spectropolarimetry.

Micropolarizer arrays are occasionally used in partial Stokes, full Stokes, and Mueller matrix polarimeters. When treating modulated polarimeters as linear systems, specific assumptions are made about the Dirac delta functional forms generated in the channel space by micropolarizer arrays. These assumptions are 1) infinitely fine sampling both spatially and temporally and 2) infinite array sizes. When these assumptions are lifted and the physical channel shapes are computed, channel shapes become dependent on both the physical pixel area and shape, as well as the array size. We show that under certain circumstances the Dirac delta function approximation is not valid, and give some bounding terms to compute when the approximation is valid, i.e., which array and pixel sizes must be used for the Dirac delta function approximation to hold. Additionally, we show how the physical channel shape changes as a function of array and pixel size, for a conventional 0°, 45°, −45°, 90° superpixel micropolarizer array configuration.

The polarized hyperspectral images (PHSI) include polarization, spectral, spatial and radiant features, which provide more information about objects and scenes than traditional intensity or spectrum ones. And polarization can suppress the background and highlight the object, leading to the high potential to improve camouflaged target detection. So polarized hyperspectral imaging technique has aroused extensive concern in the last few years. Nowadays, the detection methods are still not very mature, most of which are rooted in the detection of hyperspectral image. And before using these algorithms, Stokes vector is used to process the original four-dimensional polarized hyperspectral data firstly. However, when the data is large and complex, the amount of calculation and error will increase. In this paper, tensor is applied to reconstruct the original four-dimensional data into new three-dimensional data, then, the constraint energy minimization (CEM) is used to process the new data, which adds the polarization information to construct the polarized spectral filter operator and takes full advantages of spectral and polarized information. This way deals with the original data without extracting the Stokes vector, so as to reduce the computation and error greatly. The experimental results also show that the proposed method in this paper is more suitable for the target detection of the PHSI.

A fundamental challenge in a spaceborne application of a gas-based Time Projection Chamber (TPC) for observation of X-ray polarization is handling the large amount of data collected. The TPC polarimeter described uses the APV-25 Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) to readout a strip detector. Two dimensional photo- electron track images are created with a time projection technique and used to determine the polarization of the incident X-rays. The detector produces a 128x30 pixel image per photon interaction with each pixel registering 12 bits of collected charge. This creates challenging requirements for data storage and downlink bandwidth with only a modest incidence of photons and can have a significant impact on the overall mission cost. An approach is described for locating and isolating the photoelectron track within the detector image, yielding a much smaller data product, typically between 8x8 pixels and 20x20 pixels. This approach is implemented using a Microsemi RT-ProASIC3-3000 Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), clocked at 20 MHz and utilizing 10.7k logic gates (14% of FPGA), 20 Block RAMs (17% of FPGA), and no external RAM. Results will be presented, demonstrating successful photoelectron track cluster detection with minimal impact to detector dead-time.

Oil spill on the water bodies has adverse effects on coastal and marine ecology. Oil spill contingency planning is of utmost importance in order to plan for mitigation and remediation of the oceanic oil spill. Remote sensing technologies are used for monitoring the oil spills on the ocean and coastal region. Airborne and satellite sensors such as optical, infrared, ultraviolet, radar and microwave sensors are available for remote surveillance of the ocean. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is used most extensively for oil-spill monitoring because of its capability to operate during day/night and cloud-cover condition. This study detects the possible oil spill regions on fully polarimetric Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle - Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) images. The UAVSAR image is decomposed using Cloude-Pottier polarimetric decomposition technique to obtain entropy and alpha parameters. In addition, other polarimetric features such as co-polar correlation and degree of polarization are obtained for the UAVSAR images. These features are used to with fuzzy logic based classification to detect oil spill on the SAR images. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.