Patent ID: 7825667

Claim:
A microwave imaging process, comprising: illuminating a target with microwaves from a transmitting antenna, receiving microwaves scattered by the target at a plurality of receiving antennas to form microwave data, repeating the illuminating and receiving steps for a plurality of transmitting antennas, repeating the illuminating, receiving, and repeating steps for a plurality of microwave frequencies; and processing the microwave data to form permittivity and conductivity images by: (a) selecting a frequency relationship for each of permittivity and conductivity, (b) determining permittivity and conductivity dispersion coefficients for the permittivity and conductivity frequency relationships, (c) calculating permittivity and conductivity distributions for each frequency of the plurality of frequencies, (d) determining forward solutions at multiple frequencies from initial estimates of permittivity and conductivity distributions, (e) determining a dispersion coefficient based Jacobian matrix, (f) determining dispersion coefficient updates using the microwave data, (g) updating the dispersion coefficients, (h) recalculating current permittivity and conductivity distributions for each frequency of the plurality of frequencies, and (i) determining the forward solutions at multiple frequencies from the current permittivity and conductivity distributions.