Underwater polarization imaging method based on active illumination modulation

The optical attenuation and absorption effects in turbid water often lead to a significant decrease in imaging quality, which has an undeniable impact on many applications based on underwater visual images. A polarization imaging method for underwater scattering suppression was proposed, the crucial idea of which was to maximize the degree of polarization of backscattered light through active illumination modulation, thus the backscattered light was suppressed to the greatest extent. Through the measurement of the Mueller matrix of the target scene, the given Stokes vector of the backscattered light, the determination of the Stokes vector of the incident active illumination, and the calculation of the polarization feature vectors, the images in the scattering medium were finally recovered by combining above information. Experimental results show that the method performs well in dealing with the imaging problems under turbid water. Compared with other methods, it significantly improves image quality and provides a powerful solution for imaging applications in underwater environments. The uniqueness of this method lies in its active illumination modulation technique, which achieves the modulation of the polarization characteristics of the backscattered light through active illumination control, thereby effectively reducing the imaging degradation caused by scattering, and bringing new research ideas to the field of underwater polarization imaging.