Spatially Registered Multispectral Polarimetric Sensor

Solid State Scientific Corporation (SSSC) is pleased to propose the design and modeling of a unique Multi-Spectral Polarimetric (MSP) imaging sensor that will be capable of simultaneously imaging seven color bands and two polarimetric images. The approach will utilize recent developments in micro-optics to create a 9-channel multi-spectral imager based on a single focal plane array. The resulting MSP imager (MSPI) will operate in the visible/NIR band, incorporate a 3x3 array of micro-lenses, and use a 1000x1000 staring imager to capture seven 333x33 spectral images and two 333x333 polarimetric images during each integration time. 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 hyperspectral and polarized image processing techniques for static scenes and temporally evolving spectro-polarized events. This MSPI will sample the object scene at rates up to 48 spectro-polarimetric images per second with minimal computational requirements. The sensor concept is scalable to larger or smaller imaging formats, and the spectral resolution 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 resolution varies independently of the sampling, allowing the sensitivity of the sensor to be optimized around phenomenologically important spectral regions.