We report on the synthesis of our work on the analysis of
active spectro-polarimetric imaging concept of real-world scenes. These
synthesis extend from the investigation of depolarization mechanisms up to
image analysis and processing. We show in particular that depolarization
effects are wavelength dependent and strongly correlated with light
absorption of materials. Multi-wavelength images of degree of polarization
are recorded and analyzed, evidencing that the polarimetric image must be
interpreted in conjunction with its counterpart intensity image in order to
extract, the most relevant information from the scene. For real field
operation, the noise characteristics of polarimetric images are also
investigated under coherent laser illumination. The potential increase of
target detection performance brought by properly processing the active
polarimetric image is illustrated on a very low contrast scene.