Review of Terahertz Tomography Techniques

Jean Paul Guillet (1) , Benoît Recur (1) , Louis Frederique (2) , Bruno Bousquet (1) , Lionel Canioni (1) , Inka Manek-Hönninger (1) , Pascal Desbarats (2) , Patrick Mounaix (1)

1 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine
2 LaBRI - Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique

Terahertz and millimeter waves penetrate various dielectric materials, including plastics, ceramics, crystals, and concrete, allowing terahertz transmission and reflection images to be considered as a new imaging tool complementary to X-Ray or Infrared. Terahertz imaging is a well-established technique in various laboratory and industrial applications. However, these images are often two-dimensional. Three-dimensional, transmission-mode imaging is limited to thin samples, due to the absorption of the sample accumulated in the propagation direction. A tomographic imaging procedure can be used to acquire and to render three-dimensional images in the terahertz frequency range, as in the optical, infrared or X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this paper, after a brief introduction to two dimensional millimeter waves and terahertz imaging we establish the principles of tomography for Terahertz Computed tomography (CT), tomosynthesis (TS), synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and time-of-flight (TOF) terahertz tomography. For each technique, we present advantages, drawbacks and limitations for imaging the internal structure of an object.

Keywords: Tomography; Terahertz imaging; 3D reconstruction; Time of flight; Holography; Diffractive imaging; Synthetic aperture radar (SAR); THz Computed tomography; Iterative method; BFP; Volume inspection; Non destructive testing; Sinogram; Millimeter waves; Far infrared; Spectro imaging; Reflection and transmission images

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Jean Paul Guillet, Benoît Recur, Louis Frederique, Bruno Bousquet, Lionel Canioni, et al.. Review of Terahertz Tomography Techniques. Journal of Infrared, Millimeter and Terahertz Waves, 2014, 35 (4), pp.382-411. ⟨10.1007/s10762-014-0057-0⟩. ⟨hal-00968839⟩