AbstractWhen the product of contrast and size of an object, which is to be reconstructed by using the ultrasound inverse scattering tomography algorithm, is large, it is well known that those algorithms fail to converge to a unique global minimum. In order to solve this well known and difficult convergence problem, in this paper we present a new method, which converges to the true solution, for obtaining the scattering potential without using the Born or Rytov approximation. This method converts the nonlinear nature of the problem into a linear one. Through computer simulations we will show the validity of the new approach for high contrast two‐dimensional scattering objects which are insonified by an incident ultrasound plane wave. Numerical results show that the reconstruction error is very small for circularly symmetric two‐dimensional cylindrical objects whose refractive indices range from small to even sufficiently large values for which the previous inverse scattering algorithms fail to conve