Event-based imaging polarimeter

The design and initial experimental results from an event-based, rotating-polarizer, imaging polarimeter are presented. The speed of division-of-time imaging systems is traditionally constrained by the frame rate of the focal plane sensor and the need to sample several polarization angles during rotation. The asynchronous event reporting of event-based cameras (EBCs) frees these constraints but introduces challenges. The Stokes vectors used to describe polarization are based on irradiance, but EBCs are inherently change-detection systems that struggle to estimate irradiance. Two methods of estimating the polarization state without first recovering irradiance images are presented and compared. The DAVIS 346 sensor enables simultaneous recording of events with conventional frame-based images, enabling direct comparison of event-based polarization estimates to traditional techniques. (c) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.