EPJ Web of Conferences 5, 04003 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20100504003

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

¹ Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, CNRS, Univ Paris-Sud, RD 128, 91127 Palaiseau, France.
² Thales research and Technology - France, RD128, 91767 Palaiseau.
³ Institut de physique de Rennes, CNRS, Univ Rennes 1, 35042 Rennes, France.

Abstract

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.