Investigation of physical properties of an object

摘要

An imaging system for an object such as human or animal tissue uses scattering of an illuminating electromagnetic wave by acoustic vibrations to generate a scattered electromagnetic wave including Doppler components shifted from the frequency of the illuminating electromagnetic wave by frequencies of the acoustic vibration and multiples thereof. An acoustic transducer apparatus applies acoustic vibrations localized in two or three dimensions in a plurality of regions. A transmitter simultaneously illuminates the object with an illuminating electromagnetic wave that has a frequency in the range from 100 MHz to 100 GHz, the vibration direction of the acoustic vibration having a component parallel to the propagation direction of the illuminating electromagnetic wave. A receiver receives the scattered electromagnetic wave. A signal processing apparatus derives characteristics of the Doppler components, and stores image data representing the derived characteristic.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
applying to an object acoustic vibration localized in two or three dimensions in a plurality of regions in the object simultaneously but with different frequencies in each region; simultaneously illuminating the object with an illuminating electromagnetic wave that has a frequency in a range extending down from 30 THz, the vibration direction of the acoustic vibration having a component parallel to the propagation direction of the illuminating electromagnetic wave so that the acoustic vibration of the object in each of the plurality of regions generates a scattered electromagnetic wave including Doppler components shifted from the frequency of the illuminating electromagnetic wave by frequencies of the acoustic vibration and multiples thereof; receiving the scattered electromagnetic wave generated in each of the plurality of regions, deriving from the received, scattered electromagnetic wave data representing at least one characteristic of the Doppler components in respect of each region; and storing the derived data in respect of each region as image data representing an image.