Some theoretical aspects of a backscattering based tomographic imaging technique

In Mensa et al. (1983), a particular coherent tomographic technique was proposed to determine the scattering strength density function g inside a body by suitably processing the backscattered field. This method produces the Fourier transform of g on any preassigned number of spectral rings with radii proportional to the frequency values of the exploring radiation. For an experimental implementation of the method, the influence of many of the parameters involved must be studied. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the reconstruction method with respect to the choice of the exploring frequencies and to the number of explorations made. Finally, the resolution capability of the method was studied for two point scatterers in a homogeneous environment. Particular reference was made to microwave exploration but the criteria derived may also directly be applied to ultrasound based methods.