Application research of polarization imaging technology in inhomogeneous media/material: A review

Light scattering in inhomogeneous media/material, such as fog, turbid water and biological tissues, severely limits the imaging quality and resolution of traditional imaging techniques. Polarization imaging technology uses the polarization characteristics of light to effectively suppress scattered light and enhance the target signal, thus improving the imaging quality. At present, there are many research achievements focus on polarization imaging technology, but there is a lack of systematic and comprehensive review. In this paper, the recent progress of polarization imaging in inhomogeneous media/material is reviewed and analyzed. Firstly, we introduce the fundamental theory of polarization imaging, covering the acquisition of polarization parameters and the concept of the Mueller matrix. Next, we detail the primary application areas, including image defogging enhancement, medical imaging diagnosis, remote sensing object classification, and industrial vision inspection. Subsequently, we analyze and compare the advantages and limitations of existing methods, along with their specific application scopes. Finally, we discuss the challenges and prospective developments in polarization imaging, offering insights for researchers, particularly in hardware optimization, imaging technique integration, the fusion of deep learning with physical models, and the acceleration of quantum computing.