Seismic and medical ultrasound imaging of velocity and density variations by nonlinear vectorial inverse scattering

We present an iterative nonlinear inverse scattering algorithm for high-resolution acoustic imaging of density and velocity variations. To solve the multi-parameter nonlinear direct scattering problem, the acoustic wave equation for inhomogeneous media in the frequency domain is transformed into a vectorial integral equation of the Lippmann-Schwinger type for the combined pressure and pressure-gradient field. To solve the multi-parameter nonlinear inverse scattering problem, we use the Newton-Kantorovich method in conjunction with matrix-free representations of the Fréchet derivative operators and their adjoints. The approximate Hessian information that is accounted for in our iterative solution of the (nonlinear) multi-parameter inverse scattering problem is essential for the mitigation of multi-parameter cross talk effects. Numerical examples related to seismic and medical ultrasound breast imaging illustrate the performance of the new algorithm for multi-parameter acoustic imaging.