Polarization imaging model considering the non-ideality of polarizers

Common polarization imaging models are mostly based on an ideal polarizer assumption. This paper proposes a polarization imaging non-ideal model considering the non-ideality of polarizers. The corresponding correction formulas for degree of linear polarization (DoLP) and angle of polarization are also provided. Experiments on linearly polarized light and partially polarized light reflected by a glass plate suggest that when the extinction ratio of polarizers is 100:1, the DoLP relative error of linearly polarized light with the non-ideal model is reduced by 1.87% compared to that with the ideal model; the DoLP relative error of partially polarized light with the non-ideal model is reduced by 1.69% compared to that with the ideal model. Application of the non-ideal model can effectively improve the precision of polarization measurement. In particular, this improvement is more obvious with a low-extinction-ratio (less than 100:1) analyzer. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America