A computationally efficient finite element method for shape reconstruction of inverse conductivity problems

Abstract The inverse conductivity problem aims at determining the unknown conductivity inside a bounded domain from boundary measurements. In practical applications, algorithms based on minimizing a regularized residual functional subject to PDE constraints have been widely used to deal with this problem. However, such approaches typically require repeated iterations and solving the forward problem at each iteration, which leads to a heavy computational cost. To address this issue, we first reformulate the inverse conductivity problem as a minimization problem involving a regularized residual functional. We then transform this minimization problem into a variational problem and establish the equivalence between them. This reformulation enables the employment of the finite element method to reconstruct the shape of the object from finitely many measurements. Notably, the proposed approach allows us to identify the object directly without requiring any iterative procedure. A prior error estimates are rigorously established to demonstrate the theoretical soundness of the finite element method. Based on these estimates, we provide a criterion for selecting the regularization parameter. Additionally, several numerical examples are presented to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach in shape reconstruction.