3D scanner technology implementation to numerical modeling of GPR

This study presents an integration of 3D scanned objects into numerical modeling for ground-penetrating radar (GPR). The characteristics of antenna, features of surrounding medium and the realistic design of a buried object are decisive for the success of the numerical modeling. Realistic antenna design has become one of the remarkable developments of the numerical modeling by Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. The antenna models with the specific features of commercial GPR antennas, allow researchers to obtain much closer synthetic response to measurements. In addition, lossy and inhomogeneous soil mixtures with different water content can be included in numerical models. Despite the realistic description of GPR antennas and soil types, buried objects are still roughly defined using basic geometric shapes. This article presents an alternative approach using outputs of the 3D scanner as an input into gprMax software to overcome more complex and realistic shapes of the buried objects. For this purpose, a bone fragment belonging to a bovine was firstly simulated with a basic geometric object (cylinder) and then modeled with the realistic shape of the bone, which was obtained from 3D scanner. In this way, the numerical modeling can be performed with the real shape of the object in the lossy, inhomogeneous surrounding medium by using a realistic modeled commercial antenna.