Optical polarization to improve discrimination capability of remote sensing: a laboratory study

Recent procedure for the generation of polarized images (Ramesh Chandra and Narottam Singh 1997) has been adopted to generate images which show, from simultaneously acquired field radiometric data: (i) average values of degre e of linear polarization (DOP) of light reflected from the surfaces of plan e objects; (ii) the maximum intensity (I-max) of light transmitted through a visible linear polarizer in one spectral band 0.504-0.596 mum; and (iii) the minimum intensities (I-min) of light transmitted through visible linear polarizers in three spectral bands in the wavelength region 0.504-0.798 mu m. Sixteen false colour composites (FCCs) from different combinations of DO P, I-max and I-min data files have been created on one photograph from simu ltaneously acquired field radiometric data for comparison. Comparison of im ages reveals that indiscriminable objects which have similar diffused radia nce can be discriminated by including polarization data if they have variat ion in the DOP. Also, objects invisible in FCCs made from I-min data files without stretching can be seen in FCCs made from DOP, I-max and I-min data files without stretching.