Generalized frequency-domain synthetic aperture focusing technique for ultrasonic imaging of irregularly layered objects.

In ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT), the phase shift migration (PSM) technique, as a frequency-domain implementation of the synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT), can be adopted for imaging of regularly layered objects that are inhomogeneous only in depth but isotropic and homogeneous in the lateral direction. To deal with irregularly layered objects that are anisotropic and inhomogeneous in both the depth and lateral directions, a generalized frequency- domain SAFT, called generalized phase shift migration (GPSM), is proposed in this paper. Compared with PSM, the most significant innovation of GPSM is that the phase shift factor is generalized to handle anisotropic media with lateral velocity variations. The generalization is accomplished by computer programming techniques without modifying the PSM model. In addition, SRFFT (split-radix fast Fourier transform) input/output pruning algorithms are developed and employed in the GPSM algorithm to speed up the image reconstructions. The experiments show that the proposed imaging techniques are capable of reconstructing accurate shapes and interfaces of irregularly layered objects. The computing time of the GPSM algorithm is much less than the time-domain SAFT combined with the ray-tracing technique, which is, at present, the common method used in ultrasonic NDT industry for imaging layered objects. Furthermore, imaging regularly layered objects can be regarded as a special case of the presented technique.