Design of a new optical fiber process tomography configuration with high image reconstruction resolution

Abstract In this paper, a new optical fiber process tomography (OFPT) configuration for the measurement of two-phase flows in the space of cylindrical pipes with circular cross-sections in industry is developed. Rotate scanning is used to acquire enough projections. A liquid drop or gas bubble can be regarded as an opaque medium owing to the employment of small numerical-aperture (N.A.) optical-fiber-collimators (OFC) in future practical systems. Theoretical calculation indicates that an extremely high resolution, e.g., 1/(40,000 π ) can be realized by decreasing the size of a pixel to the width of a light ray, e.g., 1 mm when the velocity of the flow is 10 cm/s if data acquisition rate of single channel and the rotation speed are 2 Mbps and 1500 rpm/min, respectively, which can be realized by commercial high-speed data acquisition card and single-shaft turntable.