Probing for electrical inclusions with complex spherical waves

Abstract

Let a physical body Ω in ℝ2 or ℝ3] be given. Assume that the electric conductivity distribution inside Ω consists of conductive inclusions in a known smooth background. Further, assume that a subset Γ ⊂ ∂Ω is available for boundary measurements. It is proved using hyperbolic geometry that certain information about the location of the inclusions can be exactly recovered from static electric measurements on Γ. More precisely: given a ball B with center outside the convex hull of Si and satisfying (B̄ ∩ ∂Ω) ⊂γ, boundary measurements on γ with explicitly given Dirichlet data are enough to determine whether B intersects the inclusion. An approximate detection algorithm is introduced based on the the' ory. Numerical experiments in dimension two with simulated noisy data suggest that the algorithm finds the inclusion-free domain near T and is robust against measurement noise. ©2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.