On the achievable resolution from microwave tomography

Microwave tomography (MWT) is an electromagnetic imaging modality that is actively being investigated for different biomedical and industrial non-destructive testing applications. In MWT, the quantitative dielectric profile of the object of interest (OI) is to be found from scattered microwave data collected outside the object. This is achieved by processing the scattered data using an appropriate inversion algorithm, which effectively solves the associated electromagnetic inverse scattering problem. The achievable image resolution from an MWT system is governed by several parameters including those of the OI itself. For example, experimental separation resolution levels ranging from one-thirtieth to one-eighth of a wavelength have been reported from an MWT system, depending on the object being imaged (Gilmore, et. al., IEEE AWPL, 2009). Similar resolution studies can also be found in (S. Semenov, et. al., IEEE MTT, 2000) and (T. Cui, et. al., IEEE TAP, 2004) and in their references.