Detection of defects in wood slabs by using a microwave imaging technique

In this paper, an experimental set up based on interrogating microwaves is used to obtain images of the cross section of dielectric cylinders. In particular, a microwave tomographic configuration is used to inspect wood slabs in order to search for defects and voids. The measured data (samples of the scattered electric field) are inverted by using an efficient reconstruction technique, which is able to handle the ill-posedness of the inverse scattering problem. The developed experimental apparatus is validated in this paper by means of several numerical simulations. Preliminary experimental results are also reported.