Imaging quality analysis and evaluation of optical polarization imaging system with optical transfer matrix

An optical transfer matrix (OTM) is introduced and proposed to analyze the performance of optical polarization imaging systems. This 4 × 4 OTM describes the frequency transfer characteristics of the optical system for each Stokes parameter. It includes the transfer functions and the crosstalk functions. The transfer functions can be used to analyze the imaging quality of the system for each polarization component, while crosstalk functions indicate the polarization errors. We calculate the modulation transfer matrix as an example and numerically simulate the Stokes vector imaging for a polarization imaging system with a singlet and rotating polarization elements. The simulated imaging results show conformance with the analysis.