Application of acoustic reflection tomography to sonar imaging

Computer-aided tomography is a technique for providing a two-dimensional cross-sectional view of a three-dimensional object through the digital processing of many one-dimensional views (or projections) taken at different look directions. In acoustic reflection tomography, insonifying the object and then recording the backscattered signal provides the projection information for a given look direction (or aspect angle). Processing the projection information for all possible aspect angles enables an image to be reconstructed that represents the two-dimensional spatial distribution of the object's acoustic reflectivity function when projected on the imaging plane. The shape of an idealized object, which is an elliptical cylinder, is reconstructed by applying standard backprojection, Radon transform inversion (using both convolution and filtered backprojections), and direct Fourier inversion to simulated projection data. The relative merits of the various reconstruction algorithms are assessed and the resulting shape estimates compared. For bandpass sonar data, however, the wave number components of the acoustic reflectivity function that are outside the passband are absent. This leads to the consideration of image reconstruction for bandpass data. Tomographic image reconstruction is applied to real data collected with an ultra-wideband sonar transducer to form high-resolution acoustic images of various underwater objects when the sonar and object are widely separated.