Ultrasonic Imaging for Industrial Scene Analysis

An overview on the complex field of acoustical imaging is presented. In the field of industrial scene analysis mostly optical systems are employed. Acoustical methods are inferior to optical methods with respect to resolution and to data acquisition time. However acoustical systems can measure the distance of objects easily thus giving a three dimensional representation of the field of view. This is difficult to obtain by visual methods and for a limited class of applications acoustical imaging may be complementary or even competitive to optical imaging.