Dead pixel replacement in LWIR microgrid polarimeters

LWIR imaging arrays are often affected by nonresponsive pixels, or "dead pixels." These dead pixels can severely degrade the quality of imagery and often have to be replaced before subsequent image processing and display of the imagery data. For LWIR arrays that are integrated with arrays of micropolarizers, the problem of dead pixels is amplified. Conventional dead pixel replacement (DPR) strategies cannot be employed since neighboring pixels are of different polarizations. In this paper we present two DPR schemes. The first is a modified nearest-neighbor replacement method. The second is a method based on redundancy in the polarization measurements. We find that the redundancy-based DPR scheme provides an order-of-magnitude better performance for typical LWIR polarimetric data. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.