The promise of full waveform inversion: Though hugely compute-intensive, the FWI method holds promise in capturing waveform information in seismic data

摘要

One of the most popular phrases in the geophysical community today is "full waveform inversion" (FWI). FWI was initially developed almost three decades ago in an attempt to obtain from seismic data quantitative information about subsurface rock properties on a very detailed scale. Over the last few years there have been some encouraging results employing FWI in seismic processing marine and land data. FWI iteratively updates an estimated subsurface model and computes corresponding synthetic data to reduce the difference (the data misfit) between the synthetic and recorded data. The objective of FWI is to match the synthetic and recorded data in a comprehensive way such that all information in waveforms (e.g., traveltimes, amplitudes, converted waves, multiples, etc.) is accounted for in the data misfit (Figure 1).