Polarizer-Free Degree Of Polarization Computational Imaging From A Single Speckle Image

We report the experimental validation of a snapshot computational degree of polarization imaging technique, based on local analysis of the statistics of a single speckle image acquisition. The applicability of this imaging technique is demonstrated on various samples, and its precision is analyzed and compared with theoretical predictions. Then, we theoretically study the ability of this approach to discriminate samples with various depolarization degrees while sharing similar reflectance properties. We quantitatively compare the detection performances of this approach with standard polarization imaging strategies and evaluate the increase in spatial resolution required to share similar detection efficiency.