Refined stability estimates in electrical impedance tomography with multi-layer structure

Abstract

In this paper we study the inverse problem of determining an electrical inclusion in a multi-layer composite from boundary measurements in 2D. We assume the conductivities in different layers are different and derive a stability estimate for the linearized map with explicit formulae on the conductivity and the thickness of each layer. Intuitively, if an inclusion is surrounded by a highly conductive layer, then, in view of "the principle of the least work", the current will take a path in the highly conductive layer and disregard the existence of the inclusion. Consequently, a worse stability of identifying the hidden inclusion is expected in this case. Our estimates indeed show that the ill-posedness of the problem increases as long as the conductivity of some layer becomes large. This work is an extension of the previous result by Nagayasu-Uhlmann-Wang[15], where a depth-dependent estimate is derived when an inclusion is deeply hidden in a conductor. Estimates in this work also show the influence of the depth of the inclusion.