Ricerc@Sapienza

A research project aimed at the study of the archaeological context of the Basilica Julia in the Roman Forum (Rome, Italy) and the transformation phases of the building involved the use of different techniques of geophysical prospecting. In particular, Ground-penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) surveys were carried out in order to record the buried structures of the Basilica and the previous buildings laying in the southern part of the Forum.

This paper presents two electromagnetic simulators based on the Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) technique and Boundary Element Method (BEM), for Ground Penetrating Radar applications. The first simulator is the new open-source version of the software gprMax, which employs Yee's algorithm to solve Maxwell's equations by using the FDTD method and includes advanced features allowing the accurate analysis of realistic scenarios.

This paper focuses on the use of the Canny edge detector as the first step of an advanced imaging algorithm for automated detection of hyperbolic reflections in ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data. Since the imaging algorithm aims to work in real time; particular attention is paid to its computational efficiency. Various alternative criteria are designed and examined, to fasten the procedure by eliminating unnecessary edge pixels from Canny-processed data, before such data go through the subsequent steps of the detection algorithm.