INVERSE RADIATION PROBLEM IN AXISYMMETRICAL CYLINDRICAL SCATTERING MEDIA

A semianalytical technique has been developed to solve the inverse radiation problem in absorbing and scattering cylindrical media. The radiative properties in the medium are allowed to vary radially. Isotropic, linearly anisotropic, and Rayleigh scattering phase functions are considered, and both the first- and second-order scattering or radiation are accounted for in the analysis. The angular radiosity distribution obtained from the solution of the forward problem is employed as input to the inverse analysis. A numerical inversion scheme is followed to determine the profiles of extinction coefficient and the single-scattering albedo. For an anisotropically scattering medium, the asymmetry factor is also recovered. It is shown that the method is simple and accurate, even though the inversion is limited to three- or four-layer media. This inversion procedure can easily be used in experiments to determine the effective radiative property distributions in cylindrical systems.