MICROWAVE TOMOGRAPHY ENHANCED GPR SURVEYS FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE MONITORING: AN OVERVIEW OF THE ACHIEVABLE RECONSTRUCTION CAPABILITIES

Today, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) represents a well assessed technology of huge interest in all those applicative contexts in which non-invasive diagnostic surveys are required, such as infrastructure and cultural heritage monitoring as well as archaeological and geological inspections. Despite its widespread applicability, several efforts are continuously addressed towards the optimization of GPR systems in order to speed up the involved survey time on one hand and, on the other hand, to simplify the readability of the obtained images and make their interpretation less dependent on the user expertise. In this frame, a microwave tomographic approach based on a linear model of the underlining scattered phenomenon has been proposed and applied in several GPR measurement campaigns. This communication aims at reviewing the main features of such a data processing approach as well as the advantages offered by its use. In this respect, a couple of examples concerning the use of microwave tomography enhanced GPR in the framework of archaeological surveys and cultural heritage monitoring are summarized briefly.