Abstract: In the traditional structure detection method, it is generally required to sample the structure by drilling, which will lead to the structure with some additional damage. However, the nondestructive testing method will not destroy the structure itself in the detection process. This paper proposes an approach for detecting an internal defect or inclusion by using the extended finite element methods (XFEM) and the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm to provide a new way for the nondestructive testing of the structure. The XFEM approximation contains enriched elements in the enriched sub-domain for capturing discontinuities. The method can reflect the location and size of the defect or inclusion by the level set function without re-meshing. Thus, the main advantage of the proposed approach is that at each iteration process, the XFEM alleviates the need for remeshing the domain, and the ABC algorithm can e ectively avoid the appearance of the local optimum by the global and local searching strategy. The XFEM combined with ABC intelligent optimization algorithm can e ectively reduce the amount of calculation for inverse analysis. The results show that the proposed approach can e ectively detect the internal defect or inclusion in materials.