A GIBBS RANDOM FIELD-BASED ACTIVE ELECTROMAGNETIC METHOD FOR NONINVASIVE DIAGNOSTICS IN BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

A new approach to the reconstruction of dielectric properties of unkno wn biological bodies is proposed, which is developed starting from an integral equation formulation of the electromagnetic inverse scatterin g problem. A Gibbs Random Field model is used to develop a stochastic approach based on the Bayes theorem. An iterative solution is obtained by the simulated annealing technique. The method integrates the impor tant features of the spatial domain method with the possibility of tak ing into account a priori information on the scatterers under test. No large ill-conditioned matrix inversions are required. A two-dimension al formulation is considered, involving cylindrical scatterers illumin ated by transverse magnetic-wave incident fields. A multi-illumination multiview reconstruction process is also performed. Some results on t he reconstruction of strong scatterers are reported.