Invertible propagator for plane wave illumination of forward-scattering structures.

Propagation of directed waves in forward-scattering media is considered. It is assumed that the evolution of the wave field is governed by the standard parabolic wave equation. An efficient one-step momentum-space propagator, suitable for a tilted plane wave illumination of extended objects, is derived. It is expressed in terms of a propagation operator that transforms (the complex exponential of) a linogram of the illuminated object into a set of its diffraction patterns. The invertibility of the propagator is demonstrated, which permits a multiple-shot scatter correction to be performed, and makes the solution especially attractive for either projective or tomographic imaging. As an example, high-resolution tomograms are obtained in numerical simulations implemented for a synthetic phantom, with both refractive and absorptive inclusions.