Title :
Fused spectropolarimetric visible near-IR imaging
Author_Institution :
Sensors & Electron Devices Directorate, US Army Res. Lab., Adelphi, MD, USA
Abstract :
We report on the development and characterization of a compact, lightweight, robust, and field-portable spectropolarimetric imaging system at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). It operates in the 400 to 900 nm region with a passband of 10 nm at 600 nm. This automated imager is designed using a tellurium dioxide (TeO2) acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) as an agile spectral selection element and a commercial nematic liquid-crystal variable retardation (LCVR) plate as a tunable polarization selection device with an off-the-shelf uncooled charge coupled device (CCD) camera and optics. Image acquisition with both spectral and polarization features facilitates significant improvement in target detection. This paper has described the design concept and a program, with a detailed description of the VNIR imager, and present images obtained from it and the analysis of the results.
Keywords :
CCD image sensors; acousto-optical filters; image processing; infrared imaging; nematic liquid crystals; optical tuning; polarimeters; 10 to 600 nm; 400 to 900 nm; CCD camera; TeO2; US Army Research Laboratory; acousto-optic tunable filter; automated imager; charge coupled device camera; image acquisition; infrared imaging; nematic liquid crystal variable retardation plate; passband filters; spectral features; spectropolarimetric imaging system; target detection; tunable polarization selection device; visible near IR imaging; Charge-coupled image sensors; Laboratories; Liquid crystal devices; Optical design; Optical filters; Optical imaging; Optical polarization; Passband; Robustness; Tellurium;
Conference_Titel :
Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop, 2003. Proceedings. 32nd
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2029-4
DOI :
10.1109/AIPR.2003.1284243
