EFFECTS OF POLARIZATION STATE AND SCATTERER CONCENTRATION ON OPTICAL IMAGING THROUGH SCATTERING MEDIA

The imaging resolution in turbid media is severely degraded by light s cattering. Resolution can be improved if the unscattered or weakly sca ttered light is extracted. Here the state of polarization of the emerg ing light is used to discriminate photon path length, with the more we akly scattered photons maintaining their original polarization state. It is experimentally demonstrated that over a wide range of scatterer concentrations there exist three distinct imaging regimes. It is also shown that within the intermediate regime one of two distinct imaging techniques is appropriate, depending on the particle size. (C) 1997 Op tical Society of America.