On the performance of a backscattering-based tomographic imaging technique: some results for an actual case

The performance of a particular backscattering-based tomographic imaging technique (Mensa et al., 1983) is studied when applied to a body with finite-size nonhomogeneous regions in its scattering strength density function. In this paper, we examine a more realistic case than that considered in a previous paper (Bramanti et al., 1986), in which point scatterers inside a homogeneous body were considered. The detection and separation capabilities of the technique are studied with respect lo (he sizes of the nonhomogeneous regions, the scattering strength ratio between the inhomogeneities themselves and the surroundings and, finally, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the backscattered signal. The differences in these performance parameters are shown for the case where the image function I (x, y) is defined as the magnitude of the reconstructed scattering strength density function g(x, y), and for the case where the definition I (x, y) = Reg{g(x, y)} is assumed.