Raw polarimetric images are captured by a focal plane polarimeter which is covered by a micro-polarizer array (MPA). The design of the MPA plays a crucial role in polarimetric imaging. MPAs are predominantly designed according to expert engineering experience and rules of thumb. Typically, only one optimization criterion, maximizing bandwidth, is used to design the MPA. To select a design, an exhaustive search is usually performed on a very limited set of available polarizing patterns, which must be constrained in order to make the search tractable. In contrast, this paper proposes a fully automated and optimal MPA design method (AO-MPA) which generates significantly improved MPAs. Instead of the single criterion of bandwidth, we propose six design principles, and show how they can be utilized to mutually optimize the MPA design by formulating a tri-objective optimization problem with multiple constraints. A much larger set of possible MPA patterns is rapidly and automatically searched by applying advanced multi-objective optimization techniques. We have tested AO-MPA using two groups of experiments, in which AO-MPA is compared against several other leading MPA design methods, and the patterns generated by AO-MPA are compared against state-of-the-art patterns from the literature. The results, obtained using a public benchmark dataset, show that the AO-MPA method is very computationally efficient, and can find all optimal MPA patterns for all array sizes. Moreover, for each size, AO-MPA obtains all optimal layouts simultaneously. AO-MPA generates designs which require fewer polarization orientations, while also yielding better performance in estimating intensity measurements, Stokes vector and the degree of linear polarization. This results in MPAs which are easier to manufacture while also being more robust to noise.

中文翻译：

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一种自动优化的 MPA 设计方法

原始偏振图像由焦平面偏振计捕获，该偏振计由微偏振器阵列 (MPA) 覆盖。MPA 的设计在偏振成像中起着至关重要的作用。MPA 主要根据专家工程经验和经验法则进行设计。通常，仅使用一种优化标准（最大化带宽）来设计 MPA。为了选择设计，通常对一组非常有限的可用偏振图案执行详尽的搜索，必须对其进行限制以使搜索易于处理。相比之下，本文提出了一种全自动优化的 MPA 设计方法 (AO-MPA)，该方法可显着改善 MPA。我们提出了六个设计原则，而不是单一的带宽标准，并展示如何通过制定具有多个约束的三目标优化问题来利用它们来相互优化 MPA 设计。通过应用先进的多目标优化技术，可以快速自动地搜索更多可能的 MPA 模式。我们使用两组实验测试了 AO-MPA，其中将 AO-MPA 与其他几种领先的 MPA 设计方法进行了比较，并将 AO-MPA 生成的模式与文献中的最新模式进行了比较。使用公共基准数据集获得的结果表明 AO-MPA 方法在计算上非常高效，并且可以找到所有阵列大小的所有最佳 MPA 模式。此外，对于每个尺寸，AO-MPA 同时获得所有最佳布局。AO-MPA 生成的设计需要更少的偏振方向，同时在估计强度测量值、斯托克斯矢量和线性偏振度方面也能产生更好的性能。这导致 MPA 更易于制造，同时对噪声也更稳健。