Image sensor with focal plane polarization sensitivity

A novel low power polarization image sensor is presented. This image sensor synergistically combines polymer polarization filters with a CMOS image sensor in order to compute the first three Stokes parameters at the focal plane. The carefully optimized microfabrication procedure for the pixel-pitch polymer polarization filters is described in detail in this paper. The imaging array is composed of 60 by 20 pixels and consumes 15 mW at 30 fps. A demo of the completed polarization image sensor will be given to illustrate how objects of similar luminescence can be discriminated based on their polarimetric properties.