Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper investigates the performance of an advanced imaging procedure for ground penetrating radar (GPR) operating in contactless configuration, i.e., when data are collected at variable distances from the air-soil interface. A data processing procedure is presented, based on an advanced implementation of a microwave tomographic approach. This improved version, recently proposed by the authors, is able of accounting for the near-field distribution generated by a directional transmitting antenna.

The imaging of buried targets by means of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) surveys is typically affected by nonideal and critical operational conditions. The targets are often located in the near-field region of the illuminating antennas, having size comparable to the probing wavelengths and, thus, to the resolution limits of the considered system.

This paper presents a comparative study of two algorithms for detecting and analyzing the characteristic shapes of reflection obtained as a result of Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) scanning technology. The first algorithm is a sub-array processing method that uses direction-of arrival algorithms and the matched filter technique; this approach is implemented in SPOT-GPR (release 1.0), a new freeware tool for the detection and localization of targets in radargrams.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network EMERALD is a recently started project aimed at progressing the state of the art of microwave imaging devices for medical applications. In this framework, the goal of the project tasks based at CNR-IREA is twofold. First, ad-hoc imaging algorithms tailored to the prototype devices for clinical follow-up and image-guided treatment designed and realized within the network will be developed. Second, a microwave imaging device for monitoring and guiding microwave ablation treatments will be designed, realized and tested.