Snapshot miniature optically replicating and remapping imaging spectropolarimeter (MINI-ORRISp): Design, calibration and performance

A high-performance snapshot Miniature Optically Replicating and Remapping Imaging Spectropolarimeter (MINI-ORRISp) for the acquisition of 3D data cubes (x, y, λ) for each of four Stokes parameters (S0, S1, S2, S3) is developed. It uses the simplest passive polarization modulator (PM) consisting of only a single multi-order retarder followed by a linear polarizer to encode the 3D data cubes into our single-2D-detector-based snapshot imaging spectrometer, and employs an untrained-network-based self-calibrating reconstruction algorithm to decode the data cubes. The developed MINI-ORRISp prototype provides video-rate acquisition of 3D data cubes (400 × 400 × 72) for each Stokes parameter over a wide spectral range of 400–850 nm. The portable prototype has a miniature size of 60 × 66 × 53 mm3 and a light weight of 410 g. Essential details of the opto-mechanical design as well as the calibration and performance characterization are presented. Extensive experimental results are provided to demonstrate the ability of the MINI-ORRISp to obtain high-quality spectropolarimetric images from both static and dynamic scenes.