A novel spherical-wave three-dimensional imaging algorithm for microwave cylindrical scanning geometries

Abstract

With the increasing threat of terrorism in recent years, the detection of concealed weapons, plastic bombs and other contraband at secure locations attracts more and more countries' attention all over the world. Three-dimensional (3D) microwave imaging surveillance systems, allowing for acquisition of full 3D microwave images of human body, have been developed for security applications. In this paper, we firstly propose a 3D imaging algorithm which not only accounts for the free space propagation losses and wavefront curvature but also avoids 3D interpolation in the 3D wavenumber domain without suffering from any approximations and truncation errors. Then, the sampling constraints and the resolution issues associated with proper and alias-free implementation of the 3D reconstruction are analyzed. Finally, the focusing capabilities of our proposed imaging algorithm are investigated and verified by means of numerical simulations as well as theoretical analysis, and an approach for better displaying projected images is examined.