Patent ID: 6028547
Filing Date: 2000-02-22
Classification: G01N,G01S

Abstract:
A method for exploring and analyzing a structure of a medium by means of a set of a plurality of detection elements independent from one another, for detecting waves coming from points of said medium, said method having a measurement phase comprising the successive steps of:transmitting at least one incident wave in said structure;receiving waves coming from the structure encountered by the incident wave inside said medium, by each of said detection elements;digitizing signals supplied by said detection elements into digitized data and storing said data in a field memory having a two-dimensional structure comprising a plurality of rows and columns, the data corresponding to the waves detected by each of said detection elements being stored in a respective column of said field memory; andfor each point of said medium reading said field memory and adding all data contained in said field memory at addresses associated to said point and stored in an addressing memory, a value representative of the importance of the wave coming from said point being obtained by multiplying the added data by a correction factor,said method having an initialization phase performed prior to said measurement phase and comprising the steps of:for each point of said medium, determining all addresses of said field memory containing the data corresponding to waves coming from said point and detected by said detection elements, as a function of a position of said point with regard to respective positions of said detection elements, andstoring said addresses for each point in said addressing memory.