CII-RMA · Coherent and Incoherent Imaging in Random Media and Applications

Wave propagation phenomena concern acoustic, elastic and electromagnetic waves and have a major impact on society because of their numerous applications. The ones concerned by the present proposal are: non-destructive testing, structural monitoring and seismic imaging. Although, imaging problems have been extensively studied by engineers, physicists and mathematicians, only recently the question of cluttered media was addressed in the context of realistic imaging applications. The word clutter is employed to express the uncertainty on the wave speed of the propagation medium, which is modeled through a randomly fluctuating inhomogeneous velocity profile. This proposal describes a research plan on developing statistically stable imaging methodologies for imaging small or extended scatterers embedded in cluttered environments. Building on efficient numerical techniques and imaging methodologies developed in earlier works this project seeks to deepen the understanding of these phenomena and provide numerical tools that permit robust and efficient modeling of the physical experiments.