Method of infrared camouflage target recognition based on polarization-gated imaging

A method of infrared camouflage target recognition based on polarization-gated imaging was proposed, in order to prevent the infrared camouflage from disturbing the traditional thermal imaging system and recognize the IR camouflage targets on the battlefield. The acquisition of infrared polarization images was implemented through 4 fixed polarizers gated by scanner. Experiment result shows that the method can successfully acquire the IR polarization image at the rate of 4 f/s, meaning this method is real-time to a certain extent. Comparing with the original thermal intensity image, the polarization image has an increase of average gray-scale value up to 14%, gray-scale standard deviation up to 42% and average gradient up to 98%, meaning an ideal camouflage target recognition effect.