Rotating polarization imaging in turbid media

It is shown experimentally that one can image an object embedded in a turbid medium by probing the medium with light with a rotating linear polarization. This method permits the ballistic photons to be isolated from the large background of photons that have been multiply scattered by optically dense anisotropic scatterers. This technique achieves a good signal-to-noise ratio even viith a low-power continuous laser, leading to images with a diffraction-limited resolution comparable with that obtained in optically homogeneous media. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America.