Research on underwater imaging technology based on polarization difference

Traditional underwater polarization differential imaging methods use a fixed polarization direction to suppress the background scattered light; however, the polarization angle of the background scattered light may change in different underwater environments, limiting their effectiveness and real-time performance. In this paper, an improved underwater polarization differential imaging method is proposed, in which the polarization angle with the highest frequency of occurrence is selected as the polarization angle of the backscattered light by Stokes vector analysis. Then, the polarization images of the two best orthogonal polarization directions are obtained by combining the polarizer Mueller matrix and processed differentially. Compared with the traditional method, this method can suppress the backscattered light more accurately and effectively and improve the quality and real-time performance of underwater imaging. This method will have an important impact on imaging applications in complex underwater scenes.