Acoustic Phase Micrographs In Mesoscale Materials Characterization

Acoustic techniques are widely employed in health monitoring and nondestructive evaluation of materials. Phase micrographs obtained by phase-sensitive acoustic techniques often contain useful information complementary to the information acquirable from amplitude micrographs alone. Most of this information remains relatively unexploited due to the difficulties encountered in unwrapping and processing of the raw phase data. In this work, a review of the derivable information from the phase images of a scanning acoustic microscope with phase contrast (PSAM) is presented. Different perspectives and insights on sample structural and biological mesocale systems are discussed, predicated on phase information obtained by simulations and three-dimensional imaging