Colorimetric representations for use with polarization-difference imaging of objects in scattering media

Polarization-difference imaging (PDI) has been shown to yield an improvement in the qualitative and quantitative detectability of objects in scattering media. In this investigation, PDI and conventional, polarization-blind imaging are combined to yield a novel representational scheme generally suitable for detection of targets having a low degree of linear polarization and specifically suitable for detection and discrimination of weakly polarizing targets in scattering media. This representational scheme meets several general criteria for optimization of the presentation of low-signal image information to human observers and takes specific advantage of the properties of the opponent-color coding used by the human visual system. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.