Abstract
A combination of conjugate gradient and Levenberg-Marquardt method is used to estimate the spatially varying scattering coefficient, ${\sigma}(r)$, in the solid and hollow spheres by utilizing the measured transmitted beams from the solution of an inverse analysis. The direct radiation problem associated with the inverse problem is solved by using the $S_{12}-approximation$ of the discrete ordinates method. The accuracy of the computations increased when the results from the conjugate gradient method are used as an initial guess for the Levenberg-Marquardt method of minimization. Optical thickness up to ${\tau}_0=3$ is used for the computations. Three different values of standard deviation are considered to examine the accuracy of the solution from the inverse analysis.