[en] The quantum mechanical inverse elastic scattering problem is solved with the modified Newton-Sabatier method. A set of S matrix elements calculated from a realistic analytic optical model potential serves as input data. It is demonstrated that the quality of the inversion potential can be improved by including non-physical S matrix elements to half, quarter and eighth valued partial waves if the original set does not contain enough information to determine the interaction potential. We demonstrate that results can be very sensitive to the choice of those non-physical S matrix values both with the analytic potential model and in a real application in which the experimental cross section for the symmetrical scattering system of ¹²C+¹²C at E 7.998 MeV is analyzed