Contrast definition for optical coherent polarimetric images

We consider polarimetric images formed with coherent waves, such as in laser-illuminated imagery or synthetic aperture radar. A definition of the contrast between regions with different polarimetric properties in such images is proposed, and it is shown that the performances of maximum likelihood-based detection and segmentation algorithms are bijective functions of this contrast parameter. This makes it possible to characterize the performance of such algorithms by simply specifying the value of the contrast parameter.