Advanced Imaging System with Multiple Optical Sensing Modes

The Spectral-Polarimetric Hypersensor (SPH) is a new compact, solid state, video rate imaging system with no moving parts capable of capturing up to 16 bands of both spectral and polarimetric content simultaneously. For these imagers, which are an adaptation of a plenoptic system, all elements for a given super pixel sample the same point in the scene, thus providing the ability to accurately measure point sources. Various scenes are imaged using two systems that span the VNIR (0.4 – 0.95nm) and SWIR (0.9-1.7m) wavebands. For each imager, twelve spectral components and four polarization states are captured simultaneously. The VNIR system captures full data cubes of 512×512 (spatial pixels) x 12 (spectral bands) x 4 (polarization states) at frame rates up to 30 Hz while the SWIR system captures full data cubes of 320×256 (spatial pixels) x 12 (spectral) x 4 (polarization states) at frame rates up to 30 Hz. From the acquired images, we compute the Stokes vector components, calculate DoLP, polarization angle, and obtain a spectral signature of objects in the scene. This data is then used to carry out target identification and clutter suppression in real-time, i.e. video frame rates.