Electromagnetic subsurface prospecting by a multifocusing inexact Newton method within the second-order Born approximation

In this paper the reconstruction of a shallow buried object is addressed by an electromagnetic inverse scattering method based on combining different imaging modalities. In particular, the proposed approach integrates the inexact Newton (IN) method with an iterative multiscaling approach. Moreover, the use of the second-order Born approximation is exploited. A numerical validation is provided concerning the potentialities arising by combining the regularization capabilities of the IN method and the effectiveness of the multifocusing strategy to mitigate the nonlinearity and ill-posedness of the inversion problem. Comparisons with the standard “bare” approach in terms of accuracy, robustness, noise levels, and computational efficiency are also included. © 2014 Optical Society of America