Tomographic approaches towards focused SAR image development

Although the similarities of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and computer aided tomography (CAT) imaging systems have been discussed in several previously published papers, a rigorous implementation of algorithms from one modality have not fully ventured into the other modality(ies). This paper proposes image formation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data using techniques developed from CAT systems. The paper provides an overview of the typical signal processing involved with SAR, B-mode ultrasound, and CAT imaging systems. Simulations of SAR received echo data processed using techniques from ultrasound and CAT imaging systems are provided to showcase the possibilities. Further discussions of our proposed future work by incorporating CAT techniques to inverse SAR and real time parallel implementation using general purpose graphical processing units are presented.