A comparison of two methods for solving the inverse scattering problem for acoustic waves in an inhomogeneous medium (Q1195371)

The authors describe and compare two numerical methods for solving inverse scattering problems for acoustic waves in a spherically stratified medium. The methods are based on the Lippman-Schwinger equation and use discretization and nonlinear optimization in its solutions. The key issues the authors consider are the influence of absorption, and which of the methods give more accurate reconstructions. The numerical examples use synthetically generated data, and the authors make a point to carefully decouple the forward and inverse modeling, so as not to trivialize the inversion task, hiding effects that more realistic problems will have on stability and resolution.