Holographic and polarization features analysis for microplastics characterization and water monitoring

The assessment of microplastics (MPs) pollution and water quality monitoring raise a lot of attention in recent years. Discriminative methods are highly needed for quick and accurate in situ MP detections. Digital holography records the wavefront information of the objects and contains the morphology, refractive index, and roughness information. Polarization imaging inspects the optical anisotropy of MPs, which is related to their birefringence and material characteristics. In this work, we explore the capability of holographic and polarization imaging for the identification of MPs. The computed features, such as the angle of polarization (AoP) and degree of linear polarization (DoLP), show distinguishable characteristics of MPs. We inspect the method feasibility on MP classification as well as biological and natural particles. The proposed method shows potential use in real-time, non-contact in situ MPs detection and water pollution monitoring.