improved optical image quality and visibility of object features based on the principle that when an object is illuminated with polarized light the parallel component of light scattered by the object is more intense than the perpendicular component thereof using this principle ice on the wings of a plane or mines in the sea can be detected by illuminating with polarized light detecting the resultant parallel and perpendicular polarization components and subtracting the perpendicular polarization component from the parallel polarization component any changes in depolarization likely being caused by the presence of ice on the wing or a mine in water in addition the images of objects in smoke fog or smog can be made more visible by obtaining the parallel and perpendicular components in the manner discussed above and subtracting the perpendicular component from the parallel component so as to cancel out the effects of the diffusive photons responsible for obscuring the image referring now to fig1 there is shown a graphic representation of the parallel i sub t u2225 perpendicular i sub t u22a5 and normalized perpendicular i sub t u22a5 components of backscattered light detected from a sample of bovine gray matter brain tissue using the following experimental setup the laser system used was a synchronously pumped tunable r 6g dye laser pumped by a mode locked pulse compressed nd yag laser the 6 5 ps.