MICROWAVE IMAGING BASED ON A MARKOV RANDOM-FIELD MODEL

A new approach to microwave imaging of 2-D inhomogeneous dielectric sc atterers is presented. The method is developed in the space domain, an d Markov Random Fields are used to obtain a model of the distributions of dielectric features in the scattering region. In this way, a-prior i knowledge can be easily inserted in the imaging scheme. This stochas tic approach gives rise to a functional equation that can be minimized by using a simulated annealing algorithm. An iterative scheme is deri ved that allows one to bypass the need for storing large matrices in t he computer. Numerical simulation results, confirming the capabilities and effectiveness of the proposed method, are reported. Solutions hav e generally been obtained in few steps, and seem better than those obt ained by other imaging techniques in the space domain. The capability of the algorithm to operate in a strongly noisy environment is also pr oved.