Patent ID: 7428050

Claim:
A multi-energy polarization imaging system comprising: a light source for illuminating a target with a first quantity of light having a first wavelength and a second quantity of light having a second wavelength, wherein the second wavelength is different than the first wavelength; a polarization-state generator for generating a polarization state for each of the first and second quantities of light, the polarization-state generator comprising a first polarizer through which the first and second quantities of light are transmitted before entering a first waveplate; a polarization-state receiver for evaluating a resulting polarization state of the first and second quantities of light following illumination of the target, the polarization-state receiver comprising a second waveplate through which the first and second quantities of light are transmitted before entering a second polarizer; an optical image-capture device for capturing a first image of the target illuminated by the first quantity of light and a second image of the target illuminated by the second quantity of light; and a processing unit for assigning a weighting factor to at least one of the first and second images and evaluating a weighted difference between the first and second images to generate a multi-energy image of the target, wherein the processing unit comprises an artificial fuzzy neural network that uses information stored in the computer readable memory to determine a suitable wavelength for each of the first and second quantities of light for the conditions at a time when the multi-energy image is to be generated.