Non-uniformity correction for division of focal plane polarimeters with a calibration method.

Abstract

Division of focal plane polarimeters are composed of nanometer polarization elements overlaid upon a focal plane array (FPA) sensor. The manufacturing flaws of the polarization grating and each detector in the FPA having a different photo response can introduce non-uniformity errors when reconstructing the polarization image without correction. A new calibration method is proposed to mitigate non-uniformity errors in the visible waveband. We correct non-uniformity in the form of a vector. The correction matrix and offset vector are calculated for the following correction. The performance of the proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art techniques by employing simulated data and real scenes. The experimental results showed that the proposed method can effectively mitigate non-uniformity errors and achieve better visual results.