Interpolation strategies for reducing IFOV artifacts in microgrid polarimeter imagery

Microgrid polarimeters are composed of an array of micropolarizing elements overlaid upon an FPA sensor. In the past decade systems have been designed and built in all regions of the optical spectrum. These systems have rugged, compact designs and the ability to obtain a complete set of polarimetric measurements during a single image capture. However, these systems acquire the polarization measurements through spatial modulation and each measurement has a varying instantaneous field-of-view (IFOV). When these measurements are combined to estimate the polarization images, strong edge artifacts are present that severely degrade the estimated polarization imagery. These artifacts can be reduced when interpolation strategies are first applied to the intensity data prior to Stokes vector estimation. Here we formally study IFOV error and the performance of several bilinear interpolation strategies used for reducing it. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America