Neural Born Iterative Method for Solving Inverse Scattering Problems: 2D Cases

In this article, we propose the neural Born iterative method (NeuralBIM) for solving 2-D inverse scattering problems (ISPs) by drawing on the scheme of the physics-informed supervised residual learning (PhiSRL) to emulate the computing process of the traditional Born iterative method (TBIM). NeuralBIM uses independent convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to learn the alternate update rules of two different candidate solutions regarding the residuals. Two different schemes are presented in this article, including the supervised and unsupervised learning schemes. With the dataset generated by the method of moments (MoM), supervised NeuralBIM is trained with the knowledge of the total fields and contrasts. Unsupervised NeuralBIM is guided by the physics-embedded objective function founding on the governing equations of ISPs, which results in no requirement of the total fields and contrasts for training. Numerical and experimental results further validate the efficacy of NeuralBIM.