Microwave Tomography for Industrial Process Imaging

This paper describes the implementation of microwave tomography for industrial process applications. Microwave tomography for industrial process imaging has different requirements from that for medical imaging. In addition to spatial resolution, high temporal resolution or real-time imaging is also important for high speed processes, flows or rapid reactions. Depending on the specific application, both quantitative imaging and qualitative imaging may be needed. Qualitative imaging would be sufficient to display distributions, patterns or shapes, which may be adequate for some applications. Quantitative imaging would however be more informative, giving images with quantitative dielectric contrast or permittivity values from which other physical parameters such as density, moisture content and phase fraction may be derived. With the microwave tomography approach described, several example applications in industrial processes are demonstrated, and a number of experimental imaging results are presented.