Spatially Registered Multispectral Polarimetric Sensor

Solid State Scientific Corporation (SSSC) is pleased to propose this Phase II program to develop a unique Polarimetric Spectral Imager (PSI) that will be capable of simultaneously imaging multiple polarimetric components in the scene in multiple spectral bands. The approach will capitalize on the design concepts developed during the successful Phase I effort to create a 9-channel imager based on a single focal plane array. The resulting PSI sensor will operate in the visible band, incorporate a 3´3 array of micro-lenses, and use a 2048´2048 staring imager to capture nine 676´676 images during each integration time: four different polarization directions in each of two spectral bands, and one broadband image. The new sensor will have no moving parts, occupy a small physical form factor, and run on a laptop computer. The design and development of this sensor represents a unique opportunity in hyperspectral and polarimetric sensing and imaging. This effort will benefit the development of algorithms for exploiting polarimetric image processing techniques for static scenes and temporally evolving polarized events. This PSI will sample the object scene at rates up to 15 spectro-polarimetric images per second with minimal computational requirements. The sensor concept is scalable to larger or smaller imaging formats, and the number of channels available for both spectral and polarimetric images can be adjusted to increase the spatial sampling for specific applications. In addition, the sensor can be configured so that the spectral and polarimetric combinations are optimized around phenomenologically important spectral regions.