CONTRAST IMPROVEMENT OF ACOUSTIC MAPS BY SUCCESSIVE DELETION OF THE MAIN SOURCES
Dirk Döbler, Ralf Jürgen Schröder · 2010
Beamforming for acoustic imaging is a well established, fast and practical method for acoustic source localization. A disadvantage of the method is the still relatively low image contrast due to sidelobes in the map. Weaker sources may be masked by stronger ones. Therefore, algorithmic contrast improvements in acoustic maps are an ongoing topic of research. Many algorithms developed for this purpose are computationally very expensive. The paper presents a simple and fast time domain method which successively deletes the dominant sources in the beamforming map and hence uncovers weaker sound sources. The contrast improvements are partially very dramatic and they offer the advantage of an interactive analysis of the acoustic emissions nearly in real time. The properties of the algorithm are discussed, and application examples and simulations are shown.