A rotating polarizing filter approach for image enhancement

This paper presents a polarization-based enhancing system consisting of a rotating polarizing filter and an image fusion algorithm. A prototype was developed and tested in different light conditions, from early morning to late afternoon, and recordings of underwater scenes were taken in a sea stretch of the Mediterranean sea. Several images within the polarization range of 0° to 180° were used in an image fusion algorithm to obtain a restored image. With respect to common image quality measure metrics, our approach has similar performance of previous systems. Conversely to current solutions, our approach benefits from the light selection properties of polarizing filters, without assumptions on the polarization angle, meanwhile it provides a generic implementation which could be easily adapted to existing cameras.