Sony’s new Polarsens™ sensors with on-chip polarization technology use four-directional (0°, 45°, 90°, 135°) nanowire micro-polarizers placed in front of each 2×2 pixel array (calculation unit) to capture multi-directional polarized images. The precise polarization data delivers additional visual information which can be used to improve contrast, reduce glare, enhance transparent objects, visualize material stress and improve edge detection and segmentation.

Many materials, such as plastics, glass, metals and liquids display intrinsic polarizing properties. For machine vision systems using standard visible-light cameras, this often means glare and reflected light which result in image artifacts/degradation and limit system effectiveness.

The provided software supports various methods of processing the 2×2 pixel arrays including AoLP (Angle of Linear Polarization), DoLP (Degree of Linear Polarization) and four-channel polarization. For additional information about polarization-based industrial cameras and the Polarsens sensors.