Underwater polarimetric imaging utilizing the full-space degree of polarization of target light

Abstract Accurate full-space degree of polarization estimation for target light remains a significant challenge in underwater differential polarization imaging, particularly in the absence of background references. Herein, we propose an innovative framework that integrates Stokes vector analysis with Malus’ law to model the complete polarization distribution. Unlike conventional empirical region-based methods, our approach removes the dependency on background references and manual operations. Experimental results conducted under varying turbidity conditions demonstrate that our method achieves 67.12% higher enhanced measurement evaluation and 178.57% better contrast compared to traditional methods. These results hold potential for applications in seabed resource exploration and research.