Ultrasonic tomographic technique and its applications

Abstract

X-ray tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are excellent techniques for non-destructive or non-invasive inspections, however, they have shotcomings including the expensive cost in both the devices themselves and their protection facilities, the harmful side effects of the X-rays to human bodies and to the environment. In view of this argument, it is necessary to develop new, inexpensive, safe and reliable tomographic techniques, especially in medical imaging and non-destructive inspections. There are new tomographic techniques under development such as optical tomography, photo-acoustic tomography, ultrasonic tomography and so on, from which we take ultrasonic tomography as the topic in this paper. We introduce a review of the known ultrasonic tomographic techniques and discuss their future development.