When light scatters off an object, its polarization, in general, changes—a transformation described by the object’s Mueller matrix. Mueller matrix imaging is an important technique in science and technology to image the spatially varying polarization response of an object of interest, to reveal rich information otherwise invisible to traditional imaging. Here we conceptualize, implement and demonstrate a compact Mueller matrix imaging system—composed of a metasurface to produce structured polarization illumination and a metasurface for polarization analysis—that can, in a single shot, acquire all 16 components of an object’s spatially varying Mueller matrix over an image. Our implementation, which is free of any moving parts or bulk polarization optics, should enable and empower applications in real-time medical imaging, material characterization, machine vision, target detection and other important areas.

当光从物体上散射时，它的偏振通常会发生变化，这种变化由物体的穆勒矩阵描述。穆勒矩阵成像是科学技术中的一项重要技术，用于对感兴趣物体的空间变化偏振响应进行成像，以揭示传统成像无法看到的丰富信息。在这里，我们概念化、实现并演示了一个紧凑的 Mueller 矩阵成像系统，该系统由一个产生结构化偏振照明的超表面和一个用于偏振分析的超表面组成，可以在一次拍摄中获取物体空间变化的 Mueller 矩阵的所有 16 个分量。一个图像。我们的实施没有任何移动部件或体偏振光学器件，应该能够实现并增强实时医学成像、材料表征、机器视觉、目标检测和其他重要领域的应用。