Patent ID: 7230700

Claim:
A method for determining and representing in real time the polarization profile of a scene, comprising: providing four systems having light attenuating optical elements; simultaneously sending rays of light incoming from the scene through all the systems, thereby creating four sets of attenuated rays; passing the sets of attenuated rays through a color filter; passing the sets of attenuated rays to a camera CCD array which forms an image of each of the sets of rays, each of the images having a matrix of pixel values, wherein a given pixel value in one of the images has corresponding pixel values in all others of the images and wherein corresponding sets of pixel values relate to same points in the scene; calibrating a mathematical relation between the pixel values and intensity values; converting the matrices of the pixel values to matrices of the intensity values; using the matrices of intensity values to derive matrices of Stokes parameters S 0 , S 1 , S 2 , and S 3 ; for selected points in the scene, deriving a set of calculated values for one or more of P, Ψ or χ, where P is the degree of polarization, Ψ is the polarization azumith angle and Ψ is the polarization ellipticity angle; converting one or more of the sets of the calculated values into eight bit digital representations; and for one or more of the sets of the calculated values, using the eight bit representations to create a grey scale representation of the selected points of the scene.