Performance comparison of fully adaptive and static passive polarimetric imagers in the presence of intensity and polarization contrast.

We address the comparison of contrast improvement obtained with a fully adaptive polarimetric imager and the best channel of a static polarimetric imager in the presence of both intensity and polarization differences between the target and the background. We develop an in-depth quantitative study of the performance loss incurred by a static imager compared to a fully adaptive one in this case. These results are useful to make a well-informed choice between these two polarimetric imaging architectures in a given application.