Development of passive ultrasonic tomography techniques

Passive ultrasonic tomography is described. Results of developing, modeling, and testing some key techniques in passive ultrasonic tomography are provided. The techniques include an algorithm for determining arrival times of noisy acoustic signals with sloping leading edge; a method for determining the source coordinates and onset times of acoustic signals and estimating the accuracy of those; and regularizing procedures for tomographic reconstruction of nonuniform distributions of propagation speed of acoustic signals. The results of modeling the effect of measurement noises on the accuracy of source location and the mutual influence of the source location accuracy and the soughtfor nonuniform distribution of propagation speed of acoustic signals are described. Results of experimental testing of the developed techniques are also provided.