Patent Document ID: 8350957
Application ID: 12227022
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An imaging method for recovering object visibility in a scene containing a scattering medium, said method comprising the steps of: (i) illuminating the scene with an active illumination system on which a polarizer is mounted; (ii) acquiring a first frame of the scene with an image acquisition equipment comprising a polarization analyzer; (iii) acquiring one or more additional polarized frames of the scene in a different polarization state of the polarizer or of the polarization analyzer or of both, or acquiring one or more additional unpolarized frames of the scene; (iv) estimating the degree of polarization of backscatter in every point of said scene; and using a combination of all or part of the frames from (i)-(iii) and the analysis performed in (iv) to obtain one or more enhanced images with improved contrast and brightness range across the field of view.