Impact of blur on 3D laser imaging: Monte-Carlo modelling for underwater applications

3D laser imaging technology could allow visualizing objects hidden in turbid water. Such a technology mainly works at short distances (<50 m) because of the high attenuation of light in water. Therefore, a significant part of the scattering events from the water column is located out of the optical depth of field (DoF), which could induce optical blur on images. In this study, a model is proposed to represent such an optical blur, based on geometric optics. The model is then implemented in a Monte-Carlo scheme. Blur significantly affects the scattered signal from water before the DoF in monostatic conditions, but has less impact in bi-static conditions. Furthermore, it is shown that blur enables a very large variance reduction of 2D images of objects situated within the DoF. Such an effect increases with the extinction coefficient.