Two-Step Contrast Source Learning Method for Electromagnetic Inverse Scattering Problems

This article is devoted to solving full-wave electromagnetic inverse scattering problems (EM-ISPs), which determine the geometrical and physical properties of scatterers from the knowledge of scattered fields. Due to the intrinsic ill-posedness and nonlinearity of EM-ISPs, traditional non-iterative and iterative methods struggle to meet the requirements of high accuracy and real-time reconstruction. To overcome these issues, we propose a two-step contrast source learning approach, cascading convolutional neural networks (CNNs) into the inversion framework, to tackle 2D full-wave EM-ISPs. In the first step, a contrast source network based on the CNNs architecture takes the determined part of the contrast source as input and then outputs an estimate of the total contrast source. Then, the recovered total contrast source is directly converted into the initial contrast. In the second step, the rough initial contrast obtained beforehand is input into the U-Net for refinement. Consequently, the EM-ISPs can be quickly solved with much higher accuracy, even for high-contrast objects, almost achieving real-time imaging. Numerical examples have demonstrated that the proposed two-step contrast source learning approach is able to improve accuracy and robustness even for high-contrast scatterers. The proposed approach offers a promising avenue for advancing EM-ISPs by integrating strengths from both traditional and deep learning-based approaches, to achieve real-time quantitative microwave imaging for high-contrast objects.