Evaluation of imaging conditions through foggy scenes for obstacle recognition

Using a polarimetric camera and a linearly polarized light source, a comparison between polarimetric and RGB imaging through foggy media has been worked out. It has been achieved via the evaluation of the histograms of the images and the contrast of different objects placed in a chamber where fog was introduced. As far as in the literature several definitions of contract may be found for imaging in turbid media, to decide the best suited for our application, a Matlab simulation app has been created. Several sets of images where taken in a fog chamber, where the fog density was characterized by the transmittance calculated via a laser and a photodiode. An additional Matlab app has been using Matlab App Designer in order to process all the images taken and calculate the contrasts and the histograms. This paper shows that polarimetric imaging may improve the contrast of images within fog environments, being a better option than RGB imaging