Intensity is mapped to brightness and the wavelength is mapped to perceived color.
However, it is well known that eyes of certain animal species are sensitive to the polarization of light. Such contrast enhancement would increase the distance over which targets can be detected, and their critical features discriminated. Motivated and inspired by hypotheses about the utility and nature of polarization sensitivity of visual systems of certain species, a multidisciplinary research group at Penn led by Professor Nader Engheta of Electrical Engineering and Professor Edward N. Pugh Jr. of Ophthalmology investigated and developed an imaging methodology based on polarization-difference signals. This project was initially supported by the National Eye Institute and later was supported by the Office of Naval Research. One of the goals of this research has been to show that the polarization of light reflected from targets, especially in scattering media, can carry some valuable information about the targets, information that would normally be unavailable to the unaided, polarization-blind human vision.