Numerical assessment of the capabilities of a microwave imaging approach for the reconstruction of dielectric targets in nondestructive evaluation applications

This paper deals with microwave imaging systems for the inspection of dielectric targets. In particular, a tomographic approach is considered for nondestructive evaluation purposes. The approach is based on the electromagnetic scattering problem and the related equations are solved in a regularized way by using an inexact Newton method. By means of numerical simulations, the paper reports an assessment of the capability of the approach in retrieving void defects inside the structure under test in the presence of various noise levels on the acquired input data (the values of the total field due to the interaction between the incident waves and the object under test).