A wavelet–vaguelet method for unfolding sphere size distributions

Abstract
We consider the classical Wicksell problem of estimating an unknown probability density function of the radii of spheres in a medium, based on their observed random cross-sections. This problem is known as Wicksell's corpuscle problem. We first convert this problem to a form suitable for the application of thresholding vaguelet–wavelet methods for the solution of ill posed integral equations given noisy data. We outline the disadvantages of using standard kernel-type or cross-validated spline smoothing methods to solve this problem. A detailed description of the wavelet–vaguelet method applied to the Wicksell problem is given. The method relies upon a specifically built family of vaguelets.