偏振包含丰富的物体表面反射、散射信息，可有效提高成像探测能力。当前，水下物体偏振成像探测实验主要集中在偏振度研究，而缺乏对Stokes矢量各元素成像效果的研究。通过水槽实验，开展不同水下物体放置深度、泥沙浓度、目标物材质及探测波段的因素对偏振成像探测的影响。结果表明，偏振成像可获得比传统辐射强度成像更为清晰的水下目标物图像，能够更好地获取水下物体的边界轮廓、纹理等信息，可以有效抑制水体对光的吸收、散射影响；与传统的辐射强度成像相比，偏振成像图像的信息量随目标物放置深度衰减较为缓慢，可探测更大深度的水下目标；泥沙浓度对偏振图像的影响比辐射强度图像大，但偏振图像仍然可以较好地在高泥沙水体中检测出目标物的边缘轮廓，且比传统辐射强度图像更为清晰；波长对水下物体偏振成像探测具有一定的影响，在清洁水体，蓝绿波段偏振成像总体效果最佳。

Polarization includes rich information of the reflection and scattering properties of the objects, which can effectively improve the detection capability. Previous studies on the polarization imaging of underwater objects mainly focused on the degree of the polarization, however, the capacities of Stokes components for imaging the underwater objects are poorly known. Based on the tank experiments, the influences of object depth, sediment concentration, object material and detection band on the polarization imaging detection are investigated. The results show that compared with the traditional imaging based on radiation intensity, the polarization imaging can obtain clearer image and better information of boundaries and textures of underwater objects, with the capacity of diminishing the impacts of the water absorption and scattering effects. Moreover, the detection capacity of polarization imaging with increasing object depth deceases more slowly than that of the traditional imaging based on radiation intensity, indicating that polarization imaging can detect deeper objects. The influence of sediment concentration on polarization imaging is more significant than that on the radiation intensity imaging, but the polarization imaging can still detect the edge contour of the target in the high concentration of sediment. The detection wavelength has some influence on the capacity of the polarization imaging, and the blue and green light wavelengths are the optimal bands for polarization imaging of the underwater objects.