On evaluation of the initial condition for a parabolic system

Abstract This note is concerned with a new method for the evaluation of the initial condition for a parabolic equation. The method is iterative in nature. Starting with an initial guess for the missing initial condition, the algorithm obtains corrections to the assumed value at every iteration. The updating part of the algorithm is the new feature of the present algorithm. The algorithm shows good robustness to noise and can be used to obtain a good estimate of the unknown initial condition. A number of numerical examples are used to show the applicability of the method.