Polarization Descattering Imaging of Underwater Complex Targets Based on Mueller Matrix Decomposition

Abstract

The traditional polarization imaging techniques cannot obtain the polarization characteristics with global variation, and the reconstruction of the target with different optical properties concurrently is seriously distorted. In this work, we overcome the aforementioned shortcomings by using the polar decomposition method to estimate the Mueller matrix of the target in the full field of view. Simultaneously, the illumination light with globally varying polarization state is calculated to suppress the noise caused by computational imaging. The descattering imaging experiments through turbid water indicate that the images recovered by our method present the similarity to the targets without scattering, and the noise is suppressed to some extent. Further, we prove the superiority of the proposed method by comparing with other polarization underwater imaging strategies.