Time reversal for radiative transport with applications to inverse and control problems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a time reversal method for the radiative transport equation to address inverse and control problems, incorporating effects like scattering and absorption, with applications in medical imaging and radiation therapy.

Contribution

It develops a convergent iterative time reversal approach for reconstructing initial conditions and establishes exact controllability using duality, even with low-regularity coefficients.

Findings

Convergent iterative reconstruction method for initial conditions.

Exact boundary controllability with minimum-norm control.

Applicability to medical imaging and radiation therapy optimization.

Abstract

In this paper we develop a time reversal method for the radiative transport equation to solve two problems: an inverse problem for the recovery of an initial condition from boundary measurements, and the exact boundary controllability of the transport field with finite steering time. Absorbing and scattering effects, modeled by coefficients with low regularity, are incorporated in the formulation of these problems. This time reversal approach leads to a convergent iterative procedure to reconstruct the initial condition provided that the scattering coefficient is sufficiently small in the $L^{\infty}$ norm. Then, using duality arguments, we show that the solvability of the inverse problem leads to exact controllability of the transport field with minimum-norm control obtained constructively. The solution approach to both of these problems may have medical applications in areas such as optical imaging and optimization of radiation delivery for cancer therapy.