Application of genetic algorithms to ultrasonic tomography

A new method for ultrasonic tomography based on genetic algorithms is proposed for the prediction of the geometry of an inclusion of known physical properties in a given specimen. New inversion operators are introduced in order to take full advantage of the physical properties of the system investigated. The efficiency of the proposed method is tested through a comparison with other existing techniques for the solution of the inverse problem. The accuracy of the procedure is verified by using a variety of sets of synthetic data. Good and fast convergence is obtained even in the case of complex geometries if parallel processing is adopted. (C) 1998 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(98)00108-8].