Polarization Eye: Seeing beyond the imagination

Polarization is a fundamental property of light which makes direct impact on the image recording- reconstruction and can have significant and nontrivial effects on high-level visual perception, such as color vision, depth measurement etc. Polarization vision has special utility in seeing the otherwise obscured object, and some animals make use of patterns of polarized light in the vision to perceive certain image features within the field. Polarization sensory as a sensory modality in the aquatic environment is commonly used for discrimination purposes. For instance, aquatic environments are rich in polarized light patterns and create a background polarized field against which objects, which diffuse or differentially reflect polarized light, can be viewed. On the other hand, polarization selectivity has also been used for interferometry and imaging applications.

In this talk, we discuss importance of polarization imaging and some of our recent contributions in the area. We will discuss how and why polarization imaging provides more information/ features in comparison to the (conventional) imaging. Talk covers different polarization imaging techniques with coherent and incoherent light. The coherent domain deal with new holography called ‘polarization digital holography’ for single-shot Jones matrix and anisotropy measurements etc. The incoherent holography covers recording and reconstruction of polarization structure of the object’s light with Stokes fringes and subsequent reconstruction using generalized Stokes parameters (GSPs). Possible applications of these techniques in imaging and characterization will also be discussed.