  The elastic and inelastic scattering of protons from mirror nuclei $^{18}$Ne
and $^{18}$O are studied in a folding model approach. For comparison, two
different effective interactions are folded with Hartree-Fock densities to
obtain the nuclear interaction potentials. Both of them provide equivalent
descriptions to the data and the deformation parameters extracted from
inelastic scattering are reasonable. The density dependence parameters obtained
from nuclear matter calculations and used for present analysis also provide a
good estimate for the nuclear mean free path. The present formalism unifies
radioactivity, nuclear matter and nuclear scattering.

Nuclear Theory