Single-shot decoherence polarization gated imaging through turbid media

Abstract

We propose a method for imaging through a turbid medium by using a single-shot decoherence polarization gate (DPG). The DPG is made up of a polarizer, an analyzer, and a weakly scattering medium. Contrary to intuition, we discover that the preferential utilization of sparsely scattered photons by introducing weakly scattering mediums can lead to better image quality. The experimental results show that the visibilities of the images acquired from the DPG imaging method are obviously improved. The contrast of the bar can be increased by 50% by the DPG imaging technique. Furthermore, we study the effect of the volume concentration of the weakly scattering medium on the speckle suppression and the enhancement of the visibilities of the images. The variances of the contrasts of the image show that there exists an optimum optical depth (∼0.8) of the weakly scattering medium for DPG imaging through a specific turbid medium.