Coded aperture snapshot linear-Stokes imaging spectropolarimeter

In this paper, we present a coded aperture snapshot linear-Stokes imaging spectropolarimeter (CASSIS) based on a combination of coded aperture spectral imager and a division-of-focal-plane polarization camera. The CASSIS achieves aperture coding with a digital micromirror device (DMD) first, and then encodes polarization state using the polarization camera. Finally, the camera gets the coded polarization spatio-spectral image at a single snapshot. Linear-Stokes spectral images are estimated with sparsity-constrained optimization from the acquired image. The principle and feasibility are validated with simulations. It is noted that a modest peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) is recovered with a single snapshot, and higher PSNR is obtained with multiple snapshots.