Full 3D Ground Penetrating Radar Imaging of Vertical Structures

Abstract

Summary This work deals with the application of ground penetrating radar (GPR) for imaging the inner of vertical elements, which is of interest for the diagnostics of columns or pillars as well as tree trunks. The structure is probed along its surface by means of vertical GPR scans. The imaging is tackled as an electromagnetic inverse scattering problem by accounting for the 3D vectorial nature of the scattering phenomenon. A linearized inversion algorithm based on the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition (TSVD) is adopted to achieve stable and accurate results. The performance of the solution approach is assessed by means of a study regarding the resolution limits also devoted to investigate how the density of measurement data affects the image quality. Furthermore, experimental results are reported to highlight the feasibility of the approach in preliminary controlled laboratory conditions.