Numerical solution of an inverse boundary value problem for the heat equation with unknown inclusions

Abstract

We consider the problem of reconstructing unknown inclusions inside a thermal conductor from boundary measurements, which arises from active thermography and is formulated as an inverse boundary value problem for the heat equation. In our previous works, we proposed a sampling-type method for reconstructing the boundary of the unknown inclusion and gave its rigorous mathematical justification. In this paper, we continue our previous works and provide a further investigation of the reconstruction method from both the theoretical and numerical points of view. First, we analyze the solvability of the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map gap equation and establish a relation of its solution to the Green function of an interior transmission problem for the inclusion. This naturally provides a way of computing this Green function from the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map. Our new findings reveal the essence of the reconstruction method. A convergence result for noisy measurement data is also proved. Second, based on the heat layer potential argument, we perform a numerical implementation of the reconstruction method for the homogeneous inclusion case. Numerical results are presented to show the efficiency and stability of the proposed method.