Recovering the initial condition and physical coefficients in a nonlinear PDE model of cell invasion

Abstract

This paper investigates an inverse problem for the simultaneous reconstruction of two spatially varying reaction coefficients, the local proliferation rate and the competition (saturation) coefficient, together with the unknown initial condition, in a nonlinear, density-dependent reaction-diffusion model motivated by cell invasion and tumor growth dynamics. Using Carleman estimates, we establish a global uniqueness result together with a Lipschitz-type stability estimate for the reaction coefficients and a weaker, logarithmic stability estimate for the initial condition. For the numerical reconstructions, we develop a two-stage algorithm employing a time-shift strategy to decouple the coefficient and the initial condition. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the feasibility, accuracy, and robustness of the proposed inversion method.