Polarimetric ghost imaging

For conventional ghost imaging (GI) systems, the object image is obtained based on the reflective or transmissive character of the object. When the object and its background have the same reflectivity or transmittance, conventional GI is helpless in detecting the object from the background. An improvement is to use the polarization components of the reflected or transmitted light. We propose a polarimetric GI system that employs a polarization state generator and a polarization state analyzer. This feature allows for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, imaging the object buried in the same reflectivity or transmittance background, which represents a breakthrough for GI applications. Using a combination of intensity and polarization information, we are better able to distinguish between the background and the different material objects. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America