  We present a novel approach for the inverse problem in electrical impedance
tomography based on regularized quadratic regression. Our contribution
introduces a new formulation for the forward model in the form of a nonlinear
integral transform, that maps changes in the electrical properties of a domain
to their respective variations in boundary data. Using perturbation theory the
transform is approximated to yield a high-order misfit unction which is then
used to derive a regularized inverse problem. In particular, we consider the
nonlinear problem to second-order accuracy, hence our approximation method
improves upon the local linearization of the forward mapping. The inverse
problem is approached using Newton's iterative algorithm and results from
simulated experiments are presented. With a moderate increase in computational
complexity, the method yields superior results compared to those of regularized
linear regression and can be implemented to address the nonlinear inverse
problem.
