Parametric estimation of the square degree of polarization from two intensity images degraded by fully developed speckle noise.

Active polarimetric imagery systems allow one to reveal polarimetric characteristics of the scene. Among them, the degree of polarization allows one to have information about the polarizing nature of an imaged object. Its estimation is standardly done from four images of the scene. Reducing this number of images can be of great interest for industrial applications, allowing in particular reduction of cost in terms of money and acquisition time. We propose a parametric method to estimate the square degree of polarization from only two measurements when coherent illumination is considered and when the images are corrupted with fully developed speckle, and we characterize the performances of the estimation.