Particle Size Distribution Retrieval from Elastic Light Scattering Measurements by a Modified Regularization Method

Retrieval of polymeric emulsions Particle Size Distribution (PSD) from Elastic Light Scattering (ELS) measurements requires the solution of an ill conditioned inverse problem. In this paper we compare the performance of classical regularization methods such as Truncated Singular Value Decomposition and Tikhonov's, to a regularization technique due to Pike that includes positivity constraints on the PSD. We also propose a new method that combines Tikhonov's approach with Pike's method. Simulated ELS measurements for two polymeric materials were generated under different experimental noise assumptions. Uncertainties on the polymer refractive index value were also considered. The PSD estimations obtained show that the implementation of the proposed more sophisticated algorithm is convenient for this very ill‐conditioned problem.