Estimation of target geometry from Mueller matrix imagery

An imaging polarimeter records the polarization state of light reflected by an object that is illuminated with a polarized source such as a laser. Active polarimetric imagery has been shown to be useful in many remote sensing applications including shape extraction, material classification and target detection/recognition. In this paper, we present a method that automatically extracts the angle of incidence, angle of reflection and the relative azimuthal angle from Mueller matrix imagery. Mueller matrix imagery provides multiple measurements from which we can construct a nonlinear system of equations. This system is solved using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm which is a standard nonlinear equation solver. We experimentally demonstrate via computer simulations that the parameter estimates can be estimated accurately using our approach.