Bio-inspired display of polarization information using selected visual cues

Yemelyanov, Konstantin M.; Lin, Shih Schön; Luis, William Q.; Pugh, Edward N.; Engheta, Nader

doi:10.1117/12.506084

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…facilitate the,.detecti.nR o9.f,.,targetsj, •cnt-ering media, even when the, polarization signal is rather weak, and that such enhancement can increase by 3-fold the distance over which targets can be detected [71,57,72]. We have also investigated the issue of optimal representation of the polarization information to the "polar-blind" human [73,74].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inspired by abilit"Ies of visual Systems of certain animal species to sense polarization information, in the earlier works of our research group we introduced [57,71,72] and developed [73,74] …”

Section: The Concept Of Adaptive Polarization-difference Imaging (Apdi)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That system processed the polarization information of the scene and used our novel mapping techniques [74] for presenting the information to the human observer. The new APDI algorithm proposed in this work will be combined with the omni-directional system to function as a powerful polarization based omni-directional surveillance system.…”

Section: Using the Apdi In Polarization Assisted Surveillance Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bio-Inspired Sensing and Display of Polarization Imagery

Engheta¹,

Pugh²

2005

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Polarization is an important feature of electromagnetic waves, and it can be affected by surface shapes, materials, local curvature and features, and relative location of sources and objects, and thus it can provide useful information about the observed scene and objects. Of the several characteristics of visible light, only two -intensity and wavelength -are encoded by the human eye and subsequently mapped by the visual system into perceptual qualities. Intensity is mapped to brightness and wavelength information is mapped to perceived color. In contrast, without appropriate instruments human eyes cannot effectively utilize light's polarization. However, it is well known that eyes of certain animal species are sensitive to the polarization of light. Polarization sensing has mostly been shown to provide information for navigation, as originally discovered by the Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch in his work with honeybees. In addition, it has been hypothesized that some species may have evolved polarization sensitivity as a mechanism of enhancing the contrast of targets in media that scatter light (e.g., under water). Indeed, in our earlier work, we have shown that an optical imaging system utilizing such contrast enhancement through polarization differencing can increase the distance over which targets can be detected, and their critical features discriminated. Thus, "polarization imagery" is a naturally occurring and demonstrably successful strategy for enhancing vision.Since the human eye is effectively polarization-blind, in mapping polarization information into visual displays, the output should be exhibited in a way compatible with the biology of the human visual system. In our group's earlier work, we have shown one such bio-inspired mapping, in which polarization information was pseudo color-coded, based on the opponent-colors model of human vision. The results established several promising imaging strategies for making available in a natural way the contrast enhancement of polarization imagery of objects in scattering media.During our research efforts in the period of March 1, 2002 till December 31, 2004, we have explored and investigated various bio-inspired display methodologies for mapping polarization information into visual information that can be readily perceived by the human visual system, and we have studied those mappings most suitable for specific applications for object detection, scene classifications, and visibility enhancement. We have introduced and developed various imaging algorithms, sensing schemes and visualization and display methodologies inspired -and informeciby biological consideration. Ourresearch efforts have demonstrated that these bio-inspired polarization sensing and imaging techniques enable us to achieve better target detection, enhanced visibility in otherwise low-contrast conditions, longer detection range in optically scattering media, man-made polarizationsensing adaptation based on changing environments, surface deformation/variation detection (e.g., detection ...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Concept Of Adaptive Polarization-difference Imaging (Apdi)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Using the Apdi In Polarization Assisted Surveillance Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bio-Inspired Sensing and Display of Polarization Imagery

Engheta¹,

Pugh²

2005

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“…The reference axis for the two angles , and . can be arbitrarily chosen, and complete information about the polarization state of the light can be obtained by capturing images with the polarizer oriented at three different angles, for example , =0, 45 and 90 degrees [26,34] From these three images, one can recover I U , I A , and . for each pixel of the image using the following expressions: …”

Section: Specular Reflection Diffuse Reflectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separation and contrast enhancement of overlapping cast shadow components using polarization

Lin¹,

Yemelyanov²,

Pugh³

et al. 2006

Opt. Express

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Shadow is an inseparable aspect of all natural scenes. When there are multiple light sources or multiple reflections several different shadows may overlap at the same location and create complicated patterns. Shadows are a potentially good source of information about a scene if the shadow regions can be properly identified and segmented. However, shadow region identification and segmentation is a difficult task and improperly identified shadows often interfere with machine vision tasks like object recognition and tracking. We propose here a new shadow separation and contrast enhancement method based on the polarization of light. Polarization information of the scene captured by our polarization-sensitive camera is shown to separate shadows from different light sources effectively. Such shadow separation is almost impossible to realize with conventional, polarization-insensitive imaging. CommentsCopyright 2006 Abstract: Shadow is an inseparable aspect of all natural scenes. When there are multiple light sources or multiple reflections several different shadows may overlap at the same location and create complicated patterns. Shadows are a potentially good source of information about a scene if the shadow regions can be properly identified and segmented. However, shadow region identification and segmentation is a difficult task and improperly identified shadows often interfere with machine vision tasks like object recognition and tracking. We propose here a new shadow separation and contrast enhancement method based on the polarization of light. Polarization information of the scene captured by our polarization-sensitive camera is shown to separate shadows from different light sources effectively. Such shadow separation is almost impossible to realize with conventional, polarization-insensitive imaging.

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“…The Polarization-Difference Imaging (PDI) is a bio-inspired technique originally developed for optical imaging (see e.g., [1], [2]) which provided significant enhancements in target detection and feature extraction over the conventional methods. The Adaptive Polarization-Difference Imaging (APDI) algorithm is a further step in the development of the PDI technique.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%