Patent ID: 8396319

Claim:
A method of improving contrast to enable segmentation of shadows of an imaged scene, comprising the steps of: obtaining images of the scene from at least 3 different angles of orientation φ; calculating a measured intensity I at a specific image location or pixel as a function of the angle of orientation φ; recovering I U , I A , and θ for each pixel of the obtained images to provide I U , I A , and θ images, where I U is the 50% of the total intensity at each pixel in the scene, I A is 50% of the intensity difference between the maximum and minimum measured intensities of polarized light ((I max −I min /2)) from each pixel as a function of the angle of orientation φ, and θ is the orientation angle of the major axis of a polarization ellipse; processing the I U , I A , and θ images to detect regions of the I U , I A , and θ images subject to different shadows.