Inverse Scattering of Pulsed Thermal Waves

Abstract

Preliminary results on inversion of pulsed thermal wave images have been presented elsewhere [1–4]. In that work a technique was introduced for removing the blurring of thermal wave images of planar subsurface features such as delaminations. The purpose of the development of the technique was to provide an algorithm for inverting a single image obtained at some time after the interrogation of the sample with a thermal wave pulse, and to obtain the shape of the scatterer with a single calculation on that image. The method involves no tomographic reconstruction and does not rely on any kind of successive approximation scheme. Recently, we have extended the method to include thermally anisotropic materials and also multiple scattering effects. [5]