The reconstruction of the complex permittivity profile of inhomogeneou
s objects from measured scattered field data is a strongly nonlinear a
nd ill-posed problem. Generally, the quality of the reconstruction fro
m noisy data is enhanced by the introduction of a regularization schem
e. Starting from an iterative algorithm based on a conjugate gradient
method and applied to the nonlinear problem, this paper deals with a n
ew regularization scheme, using edge-preserving (EP) potential functio
ns. With this a priori information, the object to reconstruct is model
led with homogeneous areas separated by borderlike discontinuities. Th
e enhancement is illustrated throughout some examples with noisy synth
etic data.