A quasi-boundary regularization leads to a two-point boundary value problem of the backward heat conduction equation. The ill-posed problem is analyzed by using the semi-discretization numerical schemes. Then the resulting ordinary differential equations in the discretized space are numerically integrated towards the time direction by the Lie-group shooting method to find the unknown initial conditions. The key point is based on the erection of a one-step Lie group element G(T) and the formation of a generalized mid-point Lie group element G(r). Then, by imposing G(T) = G(r) we can search for the missing initial conditions through a minimum discrepancy of the targets in terms of the weighting factor r epsilon (0, 1). Several numerical examples were worked out to persuade that this novel approach has good efficiency and accuracy. Although the final temperature is almost undetectable and/or is disturbed by large noise, the Lie group shooting method is stable to recover the initial temperature very well. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.