Ultrasonic inverse scattering of 2-D objects buried in multilayered elastic background structures

The inverse scattering of 2-D objects buried in an inhomogeneous elastic background structure composed of layers with markedly dissimilar elastic properties is discussed. The medium is probed by an ultrasonic line (point) force, and the scattered field is recorded along a receiver array. The goal is to image and quantitatively characterize the object from the observed scattered field through an appropriate multiparameter direct linear inversion. A rigorous model is developed to perform the reconstruction from 3-D scattered data, and its usefulness is tested on a pure 2-D problem. It is shown that this approach leads to an improved reconstruction in terms of accuracy and resolution.