Poorly visible media in X-ray tomography. (Q1413066)

The X-ray tomography consists in finding informations about the internal structure of an unknown medium, by mesurements of X-ray radiation passing through the medium. The essential notion in this book is the measure of visibility and of poor visibility. The medium is called poorly visible if the difference between the coefficient of total attenuation and the coefficient of scattering is continuous on the boundaries of various materials in the medium. Consider the transport equation: \[ \langle\omega, \nabla _r f(r,\omega)\rangle+\mu(r)\;f(r,\omega) =\int_\Omega k(r,\langle\omega,\omega'\rangle) f(r,\omega')\;d\omega' + J(r,\omega); \] where \(G\) is a convex bounded domain in the Euclidean space \(\mathbb R^3\); \(r \in G\); \(\omega,\omega' \in \Omega = \{ x \in \mathbb R^3: | x| = 1 \}\); \(f(r,\omega)\) is the density of the particle flux at the point \(r\) in the direction \(\omega\), \(\mu(r)\) is the coefficient of total attenuation, \(k(r,\langle\omega,\omega'\rangle)\) is the indicatrix of scattering, and \(J(r,\omega)\) is the density of the internal sources of the radiation. With \(G_0 \subseteq G\), \(\overline {G_0} = G\), \(\delta G = {\bar G}\setminus G,\) \(d(r,\omega)\) is the distance from the point \(r \in {\bar G}\) to the boundary \(\delta G\) in the direction \(\omega,\) and: \[ \begin{aligned} \Gamma^- &= \{ (\xi,\omega) \in \delta G \times \Omega: \xi = r - d(r,-\omega )\omega,\;r \in G_0\}, \\ \Gamma^+ &= \{ (\xi,\omega) \in \delta G \times \Omega: \xi = r + d(r,\omega )\omega,\;r \in G_0\}; \end{aligned} \] the boundary condition is: \[ f(\xi,\omega) = h(\xi,\omega),\;\forall\;(\xi,\omega) \in \Gamma^-; \] \(h\) is the distribution of the input flux of the radiation on \(\delta G.\) The main tomography problem of the authors is determining the surface \(\delta G_0,\) of the transport equation with boundary condition, from the boundary data \[ f(\eta,\omega) = H(\eta,\omega),\;\forall\;(\eta,\omega) \in \Gamma^+. \] A big part of this book consists of numerous tables of poorly visible pairs of different substances.