Diffraction tomography in acoustical imaging: Theoretical development, signal processing techniques, and applications

Abstract

Diffraction tomography has been playing a crucial role in acoustical imaging. In many applications, it has advanced far beyond the classical concept of tomography with narrow-beam illumination and intensity-mapping schemes to the level of multiple-angle multiple-frequency systems with monostatic and bistatic data acquisition configurations. In this presentation, in addition to an overview of the fundamental concepts and theoretical development of diffraction tomography in acoustical imaging, the practical signal processing techniques associated with image reconstruction will be discussed in detail. Furthermore, important subjects such as resolution limit, trade-off analysis between aperture span and signal bandwidth, and computation complexity will be fully analyzed. Responding to various physical constraints, the data acquisition process of a diffraction tomographic system can be achieved by using linear or circular receiver arrays. This presentation will also include the algorithm structures of the image formation algorithms for both linear and circular array systems to illustrate the commonalities and differences of these modalities. Results from various applications in microscopy, underwater sonar sensing, and medical imaging will be included.