Underground imaging based on edge-preserving regularization

Develops approaches for imaging weak-contrast buried objects using data from a ground penetrating radar array. An approximate physical model relating the collected data to the underground objects is developed. This model uses ray optics to represent the air/soil interface, and a Born approximation to model the weak contrast backscattering from buried objects. In order to address both modeling errors and ill-posedness, the proposed image reconstruction algorithms use regularization based on a total variation norm with orientation preference. The algorithms are tested on data generated by nonlinear finite difference time domain electromagnetic simulations.