Numerical Solution of Inverse Problems by Weak Adversarial Networks

Abstract: We consider a weak adversarial network approach to numerically solve a class of inverse problems, including electrical impedance tomography and dynamic electrical impedance tomography problems. We leverage the weak formulation of PDE in the given inverse problem, and parameterize the solution and the test function as deep neural networks. The weak formulation and the boundary conditions induce a minimax problem of a saddle function of the network parameters. As the parameters are alternatively updated, the network gradually approximates the solution of the inverse problem. We provide theoretical justifications on the convergence of the proposed algorithm. Our method is completely mesh-free without any spatial discretization, and is particularly suitable for problems with high dimensionality and low regularity on solutions. Numerical experiments on a variety of test inverse problems demonstrate the promising accuracy and efficiency of our approach.