Inverse scattering and diffraction tomography in cylindrical background media

A recently developed inverse scattering method based on the distorted-wave Born approximation (DWBA) that applies to objects embedded in known background media [Inverse Probl.19, 855 (2003);20, 1307 (2004)] is implemented for the special case of circularly symmetric scatterers embedded in circularly symmetric backgrounds. The newly developed scheme is applied in a computer-simulation study of optical diffraction tomography (ODT), and the results are compared and contrasted with reconstructions obtained using the filtered backpropagation algorithm (FBP algorithm). Unlike the DWBA-based inversion algorithm, the FBP algorithm does not take into account multiple scattering within the known background, and it is found that the newly implemented scheme yields reconstructions much superior to those obtained using the FBP algorithm. The research reported applies to a number of important applications that include ultrasound nondestructive evaluation testing of cylinders for defects as well as ODT.