Liliana Borcea

Liliana Borcea, Vladimir Druskin, Alexander V. Mamonov et al.

The motivation of this work is an inverse problem for the acoustic wave equation, where an array of sensors probes an unknown medium with pulses and measures the scattered waves. The goal of the inversion is to determine from these measurements the structure of the scattering medium, modeled by a spatially varying acoustic impedance function. Many inversion algorithms assume that the mapping from the unknown impedance to the scattered waves is approximately linear. The linearization, known as the Born approximation, is not accurate in strongly scattering media, where the waves undergo multiple reflections before they reach the sensors in the array. Thus, the reconstructions of the impedance have numerous artifacts. The main result of the paper is a novel, linear-algebraic algorithm that uses a reduced order model (ROM) to map the data to those corresponding to the single scattering (Born) model. The ROM construction is based only on the measurements at the sensors in the array. The ROM is a proxy for the wave propagator operator, that propagates the wave in the unknown medium over the duration of the time sampling interval. The output of the algorithm can be input into any off-the-shelf inversion software that incorporates state of the art linear inversion algorithms to reconstruct the unknown acoustic impedance.

Liliana Borcea, Vladimir Druskin, Alexander V. Mamonov et al.

We propose a novel numerical inversion algorithm for the coefficients of parabolic partial differential equations, based on model reduction. The study is motivated by the application of controlled source electromagnetic exploration, where the unknown is the subsurface electrical resistivity and the data are time resolved surface measurements of the magnetic field. The algorithm presented in this paper considers inversion in one and two dimensions. The reduced model is obtained with rational interpolation in the frequency (Laplace) domain and a rational Krylov subspace projection method. It amounts to a nonlinear mapping from the function space of the unknown resistivity to the small dimensional space of the parameters of the reduced model. We use this mapping as a nonlinear preconditioner for the Gauss-Newton iterative solution of the inverse problem. The advantage of the inversion algorithm is twofold. First, the nonlinear preconditioner resolves most of the nonlinearity of the problem. Thus the iterations are less likely to get stuck in local minima and the convergence is fast. Second, the inversion is computationally efficient because it avoids repeated accurate simulations of the time-domain response. We study the stability of the inversion algorithm for various rational Krylov subspaces, and assess its performance with numerical experiments.

Liliana Borcea, Vladimir Druskin, Alexander V. Mamonov et al.

We introduce a novel algorithm for nonlinear processing of data gathered by an active array of sensors which probes a medium with pulses and measures the resulting waves. The algorithm is motivated by the application of array imaging. We describe it for a generic hyperbolic system that applies to acoustic, electromagnetic or elastic waves in a scattering medium modeled by an unknown coefficient called the reflectivity. The goal of imaging is to invert the nonlinear mapping from the reflectivity to the array data. Many existing imaging methodologies ignore the nonlinearity i.e., operate under the assumption that the Born (single scattering) approximation is accurate. This leads to image artifacts when multiple scattering is significant. Our algorithm seeks to transform the array data to those corresponding to the Born approximation, so it can be used as a pre-processing step for any linear inversion method. The nonlinear data transformation algorithm is based on a reduced order model defined by a proxy wave propagator operator that has four important properties. First, it is data driven, meaning that it is constructed from the data alone, with no knowledge of the medium. Second, it can be factorized in two operators that have an approximately affine dependence on the unknown reflectivity. This allows the computation of the Fréchet derivative of the reflectivity to the data mapping which gives the Born approximation. Third, the algorithm involves regularization which balances numerical stability and data fitting with accuracy of the order of the standard deviation of additive data noise. Fourth, the algebraic nature of the algorithm makes it applicable to scalar (acoustic) and vectorial (elastic, electromagnetic) wave data without any specific modifications.

Liliana Borcea, Fernando Guevara Vasquez, Alexander V. Mamonov

We propose a discrete approach for solving an inverse problem for Schrödinger's equation in two dimensions, where the unknown potential is to be determined from boundary measurements of the Dirichlet to Neumann map. For absorptive potentials, and in the continuum, it is known that by using the Liouville identity we obtain an inverse conductivity problem. Its discrete analogue is to find a resistor network that matches the measurements, and is well understood. Here we show how to use a discrete Liouville identity to transform its solution to that of Schrödinger's problem. The discrete Schrödinger potential given by the discrete Liouville identity can be used to reconstruct the potential in the continuum in two ways. First, we can obtain a direct but coarse reconstruction by interpreting the values of the discrete Schrödinger potential as averages of the continuum Schrödinger potential on a special sensitivity grid. Second, the discrete Schrödinger potential may be used to reformulate the conventional nonlinear output least squares optimization formulation of the inverse Schrödinger problem. Instead of minimizing the boundary measurement misfit, we minimize the misfit between the discrete Schrödinger potentials. This results in a better behaved optimization problem that converges in a single Gauss-Newton iteration, and gives good quality reconstructions of the potential, as illustrated by the numerical results.

Liliana Borcea, Thomas Callaghan, George Papanicolaou

We study synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and motion estimation of complex scenes consisting of stationary and moving targets. We use the classic SAR setup with a single antenna emitting signals and receiving the echoes from the scene. The known motion estimation methods for such setups work only in simple cases, with one or a few targets in the same motion. We propose to extend the applicability of these methods to complex scenes, by complementing them with a data pre-processing step intended to separate the echoes from the stationary targets and the moving ones. We present two approaches. The first is an iteration designed to subtract the echoes from the stationary targets one by one. It estimates the location of each stationary target from a preliminary image, and then uses it to define a filter that removes its echo from the data. The second approach is based on the robust principle component analysis (PCA) method. The key observation is that with appropriate pre-processing and windowing, the discrete samples of the stationary target echoes form a low rank matrix, whereas the samples of a few moving target echoes form a high rank sparse matrix. The robust PCA method is designed to separate the low rank from the sparse part, and thus can be used for the SAR data separation. We present a brief analysis of the two methods and explain how they can be combined to improve the data separation for extended and complex imaging scenes. We also assess the performance of the methods with extensive numerical simulations.

Liliana Borcea, Wei Li, Alexander V. Mamonov et al.

We consider the problem of optical imaging of small nonlinear scatterers in random media. We propose an extension of coherent interferometric imaging (CINT) that applies to scatterers that emit second-harmonic light. We compare this method to a nonlinear version of migration imaging and find that the images obtained by CINT are more robust to statistical fluctuations. This finding is supported by a resolution analysis that is carried out in the setting of geometrical optics in random media. It is also consistent with numerical simulations for which the assumptions of the geometrical optics model do not hold.

Liliana Borcea, Thomas Callaghan, George Papanicolaou

We consider the problem of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and motion estimation of complex scenes. By complex we mean scenes with multiple targets, stationary and in motion. We use the usual setup with one moving antenna emitting and receiving signals. We address two challenges: (1) the detection of moving targets in the complex scene and (2) the separation of the echoes from the stationary targets and those from the moving targets. Such separation allows high resolution imaging of the stationary scene and motion estimation with the echoes from the moving targets alone. We show that the robust principal component analysis (PCA) method which decomposes a matrix in two parts, one low rank and one sparse, can be used for motion detection and data separation. The matrix that is decomposed is the pulse and range compressed SAR data indexed by two discrete time variables: the slow time, which parametrizes the location of the antenna, and the fast time, which parametrizes the echoes received between successive emissions from the antenna. We present an analysis of the rank of the data matrix to motivate the use of the robust PCA method. We also show with numerical simulations that successful data separation with robust PCA requires proper data windowing. Results of motion estimation and imaging with the separated data are presented, as well.

Liliana Borcea, Josselin Garnier

We study imaging with an array of sensors that probes a medium with single frequency electromagnetic waves and records the scattered electric field. The medium is known and homogenous except for some small and penetrable inclusions. The goal of inversion is to locate and characterize these inclusions from the data collected by the array, which are corrupted by additive noise. We use results from random matrix theory to obtain a robust inversion method. We assess its performance with numerical simulations and quantify the benefit of measuring more than one component of the scattered electric field.

Liliana Borcea, George Papanicolaou, Chrysoula Tsogka

We study detection and imaging of small reflectors in heavy clutter, using an array of transducers that emits and receives sound waves. Heavy clutter means that multiple scattering of the waves in the heterogeneous host medium is strong and overwhelms the arrivals from the small reflectors. Building on the adaptive time-frequency filter of [1], we propose a robust method for detecting the direction of arrival of the direct echoes from the small reflectors, and suppressing the unwanted clutter backscatter. This improves the resolution of imaging. We illustrate the performance of the method with realistic numerical simulations in a non-destructive testing setup.

Liliana Borcea, Ilker Kocyigit

We study an inverse problem for the wave equation where localized wave sources in random scattering media are to be determined from time resolved measurements of the waves at an array of receivers. The sources are far from the array, so the measurements are affected by cumulative scattering in the medium, but they are not further than a transport mean free path, which is the length scale characteristic of the onset of wave diffusion that prohibits coherent imaging. The inversion is based on the Coherent Interferometric (CINT) imaging method which mitigates the scattering effects by introducing an appropriate smoothing operation in the image formation. This smoothing stabilizes statistically the images, at the expense of their resolution. We complement the CINT method with a convex ($l_1$) optimization in order to improve the source localization and obtain quantitative estimates of the source intensities. We analyze the method in a regime where scattering can be modeled by large random wavefront distortions, and quantify the accuracy of the inversion in terms of the spatial separation of individual sources or clusters of sources. The theoretical predictions are demonstrated with numerical simulations.

Liliana Borcea, Ilker Kocyigit

We present a novel algorithm for high resolution coherent imaging of sound sources in random scattering media using time resolved measurements of the acoustic pressure at an array of receivers. The sound waves travel a long distance between the sources and receivers so that they are significantly affected by scattering in the random medium. We model the scattering effects by large random wavefront distortions, but the results extend to stronger effects, as long as the waves retain some coherence i.e., before the onset of wave diffusion. It is known that scattering in random media can be mitigated in imaging using coherent interferometry (CINT). This method introduces a statistical stabilization in the image formation, at the cost of image blur. We show how to modify the CINT method in order to image wave sources that are too close to each other to be distinguished by CINT alone. We introduce the algorithm from first principles and demonstrate its performance with numerical simulations.

Liliana Borcea, Fioralba Cakoni, Shixu Meng

We introduce a direct, linear sampling approach to imaging in an acoustic waveguide with sound hard walls. The waveguide terminates at one end and has unknown geometry due to compactly supported wall deformations. The goal of imaging is to determine these deformations and to identify localized scatterers in the waveguide, using a remote array of sensors that emits time harmonic probing waves and records the echoes. We present a theoretical analysis of the imaging approach and illustrate its performance with numerical simulations.

Liliana Borcea, Dinh-Liem Nguyen

We study an inverse scattering problem for Maxwell's equations in terminating waveguides, where localized reflectors are to be imaged using a remote array of sensors. The array probes the waveguide with waves and measures the scattered returns. The mathematical formulation of the inverse scattering problem is based on the electromagnetic Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation and an explicit calculation of the Green tensor. The image formation is carried with reverse time migration and with $\ell_1$ optimization.

Liliana Borcea, Ilker Kocyigit

We study array imaging of a sparse scene of point-like sources or scatterers in a homogeneous medium. For source imaging the sensors in the array are receivers that collect measurements of the wave field. For imaging scatterers the array probes the medium with waves and records the echoes. In either case the image formation is stated as a sparsity promoting $\ell_1$ optimization problem, and the goal of the paper is to quantify the resolution. We consider both narrow-band and broad-band imaging, and a geometric setup with a small array. We take first the case of the unknowns lying on the imaging grid, and derive resolution limits that depend on the sparsity of the scene. Then we consider the general case with the unknowns at arbitrary locations. The analysis is based on estimates of the cumulative mutual coherence and a related concept, which we call interaction coefficient. It complements recent results in compressed sensing by deriving deterministic resolution limits that account for worse case scenarios in terms of locations of the unknowns in the imaging region, and also by interpreting the results in some cases where uniqueness of the solution does not hold. We demonstrate the theoretical predictions with numerical simulations.