RIT CIS Summer Internship: Sensors/Advanced Instrumentation

Today, Peter and I worked on our presentation all day. We presented in front of Dmitry, but we still have information to change. Peter and I are going to work on actually presenting our information and using correct terminology. Overall, it was a very productive day. Shout-out to Emily and Paige for going on a Starbucks run for our afternoon pick-me-up!

On Friday, Peter and I started to look for error and the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) in our pictures. We used MATLAB to look at which pictures had the highest SNR and lowest error. We decided that pictures taken with an exposure time of 8500 microseconds and at lower angles had the best SNR. In the afternoon, we worked on our PowerPoint and did a mock presentation in front of Dmitry. We have a lot of things to change in our presentation organization-wise, but nothing too bad. It was beneficial to verbalize our info, and get constructive criticism. One thing we didn't emphasize enough in our original presentation was what Peter and I actually did, including designing the track and the glass holder. In our final presentation, we are going to explain more of what we actually did, so it will be more fun for us to present and more entertaining for the audience.

Today, Peter and I tested out different angles of incidence and changed exposure time on our camera. We are still looking for the best angle of incidence, but we think it's between 23.5 and 78.5 degrees. We are continually processing images with our code in MATLAB. Hopefully tomorrow we will finish our presentation, and can go over it with Dmitry. In the afternoon, we helped Dmitry take down his telescope on the roof of the Carlson building that he's going to ship to Oregon for the solar eclipse. I had to leave early for a dentist appointment.

Today, Peter and I worked on our code more. We were able to perfect the normalization process and calculating Stokes parameters. We then created many images that we will be able to use in our presentation, and maybe show tomorrow during the morning meeting about the difference in normalized and non-normalized images. Also, Joe came back today. After lunch, we started to test out different angles of incidence by moving our light source along our track by increments of 5 degrees. We will analyze the images, and look for which angle produces the best resolution and degree of linear polarization. We will then put our light source at this angle when taking the rest of our pictures. Tomorrow, Peter and I will take more pictures using the proper angle of incidence, and will continue to work on our presentation. On Monday, we will do a mock presentation in front of Dmitry, so we are well prepared for next Thursday.

Today, Peter and I worked on more coding and analyzing images. We learned how to normalize our images to make sure that the polarization signal we collect is in fact polarization, not error from the camera pixels. We are finally collecting data and will be able to add more info to our presentation. Tomorrow, we will do more coding, and hopefully be able to take pictures and look at correct data.

Today, Peter and I finally picked up our part. It fit perfectly! During the morning, we worked on our code in MATLAB. We were finally successful, which was pretty cool. We took more pictures, and changed the exposure settings on our camera to get rid of noise. During the afternoon, we adjusted the camera a little bit, and started to read a paper done by researcher Stephen Jacques, that also used polarized light to measure skin birefringence. We hope to apply some of the methods used in the paper to our research. Tomorrow, we will take more pictures and work on our code, utilizing Jacques methods.