Polarimetric data reduction: a Bayesian approach

In this paper, we introduce a general Bayesian approach to estimate polarization parameters in the Stokes imaging framework. We demonstrate that this new approach yields a neat solution to the polarimetric data reduction problem that preserves the physical admissibility constraints and provides a robust clustering of Stokes images in regard to image noises. The proposed approach is extensively evaluated by using synthetic simulated data and applied to cluster and retrieves the Stokes image issuing from a set of real measurements. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.