Determining underwater optical characteristics using serial section tomography

The technique of optical serial sectioning is a method which can be used to infer the optical characteristics of a three-dimensional structure with minimal disruption of the media. The method consists of scanning a plane or stripe of light through a three dimensional object and concurrently recording the scattered radiation at a fixed angle. Under suitable circumstances, the 3-dimensional structure of the concentration of absorbers can be inferred by performing an inversion on the recorded data. The article explores both the noise propagation and also the uniqueness of the solution. A so called “low passed” inversion is shown to be unique and, by suitable approximation, it is inferred that the true, unfiltered inversion is also