Elimination of Fresnel Reflection Boundary Effects and Beam Steering in Pulsed Terahertz Computed Tomography

For the past few decades there has been tremendous innovation and development of Terahertz (THz) science and imaging. In particular, the technique of 3-D computed tomography has been adapted from the X-Ray to the THz range. However, the finite refractive index of materials in the THz range can severally refract probing THz beams during the acquisition of tomography data. Due to Fresnel reflection power losses at the boundaries as well as steering of the THz beam through the sample, refractive effects lead to anomalously high local attenuation coefficients near the material boundaries of a reconstructed image. These boundary phenomena can dominate the reconstructed THz-CT images making it difficult to distinguish structural defect(s) inside the material. In this paper an algorithm has been developed to remove the effects of refraction in THz-CT reconstructed images. The algorithm is successfully implemented on cylindrical shaped objects.