Full-waveform inversion: the leading imaging technique

Hossein Aghamiry

Visualizing and quantifying the properties of a medium using sparse indirect measurements is the final goal of all the imaging methods in different fields. Over the last decade, the so-called Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) has reached maturity gates and emerged as the leading imaging technique in different fields such as seismic imaging, time-lapse imaging for monitoring purposes, surface-wave interferometry, ambient noise imaging, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) inversion, ground penetrating radar (GPR), controlled-source electromagnetic inversion (CSEM), medical imaging and helioseismology among others. In this rapidly evolving context, revisiting the fundamental concepts of FWI, elaborated several decades ago and poorly questioned since then, has appeared to be the only way towards significant breakthroughs. I want to present a new formulation of FWI equipped with leading-edge regularizations that can be used for different fields of applications.

Related paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.04405