Electro-optic modulation methods in range-gated active imaging

A time-resolved imaging method based on electro-optic modulation is proposed in this paper. To implement range resolution, two kinds of polarization-modulated methods are designed, and high spatial and range resolution can be achieved by the active imaging system. In the system, with polarization beam splitting the incident light is split into two parts, one of which is modulated with cos(2) function and the other is modulated with sin(2) function. Afterward, a depth map can be obtained from two simultaneously received images by dual electron multiplying charge-coupled devices. Furthermore, an intensity image can also be obtained from the two images. Comparisons of the two polarization-modulated methods indicate that range accuracy will be promoted when the polarized light is modulated before beam splitting. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America