IDentifyIR Mid-Wave Imaging Polarimeter for Human ID through Facial Recognition

Covert and robust recognition of individuals is a goal for military check points, entry control points overseas, law enforcement, and border control domestically. Face recognition in the visible spectrum is an important biometric modality. While it has increased in maturity, there are situations in which imaging in different spectral bands are desirable. Infrared systems rely on inherent thermal emission of objects in the scene and thus enable effective imaging in absence of visible light. Thermal imaging relies on temperature differences to provide contrast in scenes, but for scene elements that dont have significant temperature differences, recognition or identification is difficult. By adding polarization sensing capability to thermal sensors, contrast can be enhanced over conventional thermal imaging. Polaris Sensor Technologies, Inc., proposes to build IDentifyIR(TM), an Infrared imaging polarimeter especially designed to identify human faces at long stand-off. The polarimetric architecture chosen for IDentifyIR is a divided amplitude imaging polarimeter that captures orthogonal states of polarization simultaneously. A Phase I trade study determined this is the ideal polarimetric architecture for classification/identification of targets. This architecture was selected over others because it can be designed to achieve the highest image fidelity (spatial, radiometric, and polarimetric resolution) amongst all candidates.