Characterization of a buried cylindrical object from its scattered field

The field scattered by a buried object is investigated as a function of various parameters of the object. An exact method based on an integral representation of the field is used to show the strong dependence of the field on the parameters. The possibility of characterizing the target from the knowledge of its scattered field is examined. An approximate method basedo n geometrical optics is introduced and its results are compared with those of the exact one. A simple representation of the field is provided by this method, which also allows the reconstruction of someo f the object parameters. Numerical results are given for objects with weak interactions, which are of interest in biomedical applications.