Nanopolar
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits
Figure 1: Visualization of the angle of polarization for each pixel in a microscopic image of a human hair.
Nanostructured Polarization sensitive Image Sensor
Within the project Nanopolar a nanostructured polarization sensitive image sensor was developed. Based on this sensor polarization information can be acquired for each pixel of every frame. Polarization is a property of light that is imperceptible to the human eye. However the polarization of light contains valuable information, being captured by this sensor and evaluated by the developed software. For instance amongst others the angle of polarization is determined for each pixel and visualized as it is depicted in figure 1 for a microscopic image of a human hair. Thus changes of the polarization angle for example due to birefringence are detected.
Another application is the elimination of glare in images (see figure 2). Since one metapixel consists of four subpixel with different orientated polarization filters glare should be suppressed at least in one subpixel. Based on the information of these subpixels an image with increased image quality is derived.
Figure 2: Image of sweet pepper with and without suppression of glare.
The project was sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2010 to 2011.
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