Research in Inverse Problems

Inverse Problems typically involve the recovery of some physical characteristics of a material from its response to some excitation such as electromagnetic fields, heat or mechanical vibrations. Inverse problems are often illposed, which means the process of recovering the unknown parameters is very sensitive to errors in the measured response.

The Inverse Problems Group looks at both practical and theoretical aspects of the subject, working closely with engineers and scientists in industrial and medical research, as well as other mathematicians. Industrial partners include Hewlett Packard Labs, Philips Labs, Corus group and several small companies.

Our research interests

• Medical imaging using electricity (EIT), for example to diagnose water in the lung.
• Industrial process monitoring using electrical measurement
• Detection of abandoned plastic anti-personnel mines electromagnetically.
• Photoelasticity - visualisation of the stress inside a transparent object
• Electromagnetic monitoring of molten metal flow
• Finding the director field in a liquid crystal display

The work of the group involves numerical analysis including computational electromagnetics as well as analysis of partial differential equations and differential geometry

Please visit http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~bl/inverseproblems.html for further information.

Members of staff involved