Experiments in Detecting Obscured Objects Using Longwave Infrared Polarimetric Passive Imaging

摘要

Polarization has been shown to improve object-clutter discrimination in longwave infrared imaging, particularlyif the object and clutter have the same apparent surface temperature and the viewing angle relative to an object'ssurface is off normal. This work describes experimentation to investigate the feasibility of using polarimetricinfrared imagery to enhance object-clutter discrimination when the object is hidden by foliage. Many obscurationshave small gaps where optical signatures from background objects can be partially seen. In long range imaging,large pixel size typically creates heterogeneous pixel mixtures consisting of multiple material surfaces. Thismixture degrades an object's signature; however, due to the significant polarization contrast from the materials,object-clutter discrimination is still possible. Methodology and results from controlled experiments are presentedherein which demonstrate the potential capability of object detection using polarization sensitive imagery.