Space-based Imaging Technology Polarization

Aerial remote sensing is an important application area of optical imaging. Polarization of light is an important characteristic of light, different from intensity, spectrum and phase. In remote sensing, polarization imaging has the advantage of reducing the noise, improving the signal-to-noise ratio, distinguishing different materials over traditional optical imaging. Polarization information can be used to improve the contrast of the image and the quality of the traditional aerial image. In this thesis, we studied several issues about polarization image travelling through the atmosphere.In this thesis, the basic theory of optical polarization and many new ways to capture polarization images are reviewed at the first place. Next, we introduced several important sources that can affect the light travel through the atmosphere, including atmospheric scattering, atmospheric turbulence and so on. Next, the process of polarization image traveling through turbulent atmosphere was analyzed. In order to quantify the advantage of the polarization image, we studied several methods of image quality assessment. Image contrast, entropy and structural similarity (SSIM) have been used to assess the quality of traditional image and polarization image. We developed an application on the windows platform, which can simulate the process the polarization image travels through atmospheric turbulence. Based on different input parameters, such as the height of camera, intensity of the turbulence, the process of polarization image travel through turbulent media can be easily seen. We build an experimental system to capture the polarization images and successfully captured many polarization images and simulation experiment. The result validated the usefulness of the polarization imaging in the application of aerial remote sensing.