Inversion after depth imaging

Robin P. Fletcher*, Stewart Archer, Dave Nichols, and Weijian Mao, WesternGeco
Summary

Method

In many areas, depth imaging of seismic data is required to

construct an accurate view of the reservoir structure. This is
especially true in areas of complex geology and areas with
salt tectonics. Having identified the reservoir structure, we
of course want to extract further information on lithology,
reservoir quality, and fluids. This can be achieved by
seismic amplitude variation with offset (AVO) inversion.
Traditionally, depth-imaged data are inverted by converting
it back into the time domain to enable the seismic data to be
represented by convolution with a consistent wavelet,
varying only slowly with both time and spatial location. We
will describe an alternate approach that allows us to invert
the seismic data directly in the depth domain, where it has
been correctly located by the depth imaging. This approach
also allows us to account for the variability in the image
amplitudes that arise due to the complex geology and the
spatial variations in the acquisition geometry.
This new approach to inversion is demonstrated on
synthetic model data, and compared with results obtained
from conventional time-domain inversion.

Traditional approaches to migration/inversion regard the

recorded data, d, as the result of a linear modeling operator,
M, applied to the reflectivity model, r. This can be either a
discrete or continuous (integral) operator. The least-squares
inverse to this problem is

Introduction
Conventional amplitude inversion assumes that the input
migrated image has preserved relative amplitude
information and is free from the effects of illumination.
Under this assumption, stretching a depth-migrated image
back to time and applying inversion based on 1D
convolutional modeling can produce reasonable results.
However, illumination effects in complex geological
settings (such as shadow zones in subsalt imaging) pose a
challenge to even the most advanced imaging algorithms
such as reverse-time migration (RTM).
Traditional
approaches to compensate for illumination effects in
migrated images are difficult to regularize in areas of very
poor illumination.
We propose a technique for performing amplitude
inversion directly in the depth domain through
incorporating a measure of how well the migration
algorithm (or possibly a processing workflow) acts as an
inverse to the Earths response that we acquire. After
outlining the underlying theory, we compare our new
method with conventional time-domain inversion on a
synthetic example representative of subsalt inversion using
RTM.

2012 SEG
SEG Las Vegas 2012 Annual Meeting

r M*M M*d,

(1)

where M*, the adjoint of modeling, is the migration

operator. The true model and the migrated image I=M*d
are related through

I Hr ,

(2)

where the Hessian operator, H=M*M, can be thought of as

demigration followed by migration, and is often thought of
as a measure of illumination that reflects the effects of
velocity variation and the acquisition footprint. If we relax
the requirement that the modeling operator and the
migration operator are related to each other, then the
operator H is still considered as an operator that blurs the
true reflectivity model to give the image.
We define a 3D earth model m as the elastic properties
(such as acoustic impedance, vp/vs ratio, and density), and
represent the (possibly non-linear) plane wave reflectivity
calculation as r=R(m). To invert for the best model, a
simulated image, HR(m), is compared with the original
image, I, and the model is updated to derive the model with
an image that best fits the data. We define the objective
function to be minimized as

R m p
p
2
1 1
C d 2 HR m I
2
2
1 12
C m m m 0 ,
2

J (m)

(3)

where Cd is the data covariance operator, m0 is a prior

model, Cm is the model covariance operator, and p is the
Lp-norm parameter. The parameter is the weighting
parameter that determines the relative amount of sparseness
that can be brought into the inversion.

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Inversion after depth imaging

The first term in equation 3 minimizes the Lp-norm of the
reflectivity. Choosing a p value close to 1.0 introduces
sparseness into the reflectivity model as is often used in this
type of optimization (Oldenburg et al., 1983; Ma, 2002).
The second term minimizes the error of fit to the data and
the third term minimizes the changes made to the prior
model, typically built from well information and the
migration velocity model. The model and data covariance
specification, together with , control the relative weights
of these three terms in the final model selection.
A further requirement is that the final model update varies
smoothly spatially with the geologic structure. This is
achieved by applying local directional smoothing as a
preconditioner to the earth model. To achieve faster
convergence at early iterations, and because we were not
expecting to formally minimize equation 3, we decided to
follow this shaping regularization approach (Fomel, 2007),
rather than explicitly incorporating a penalty term in the
objective function. The dip field used to drive the local
directional smoothing is estimated from the migrated
image. This dip field is also used in the reflectivity
operator, R(), calculation.
As equation 3 contains an Lp-norm as well as a possibly
non-linear reflectivity operator, we choose to minimize
equation 3 using a non-linear conjugate gradient algorithm
(NLCG) or the limited-memory Broyden-FletcherGoldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) algorithm of Nocedal (1980).
Examples
A poststack inversion was applied to synthetic data from
the constant-density Sigsbee2A model, and compared to the
results of conventional inversion. The Sigsbee2A model
(Figure 1a) and data are made available by the SMAART
consortium. It is described as representative of a
geologic setting found on the Sigsbee escarpment in the
deep water Gulf of Mexico and having illumination
problems due to the complex salt shape with rugose salt top
found in this area resulting in sub-salt structure that is
difficult to image.
Figure 2(a) displays the prestack RTM image using the
migration velocity model displayed in Figure 1(b). The
image clearly shows lateral variability in image amplitude
and quality beneath the salt where the velocity model does
not indicate any corresponding changes in geology. Note
that there are point reflectors added to this model in the
subsalt sediments at two depth levels. These also show the
lateral variability in the subsalt image.

diffractors. The demigration is based on the same modeling

kernel used in the RTM algorithm. The response of
demigration-remigration of a single point diffractor is
known as the point spread function (PSF). PSFs based on
raytracing are described by Lecomte (2008) and are often
used in acquisition survey design. Figure 2(b) displays our
two-way wave-equation modeling-based PSFs computed
for a regular grid of point diffractors simultaneously. There
is significant lateral variability in the PSFs subsalt.
These PSFs are cut out from the image and interpolated
spatially on the fly during application of the H operator
(i.e., non-stationary convolution with the PSFs). For our
current estimate of the model, we compute the reflection
coefficient at each depth sample, multiply by the PSF for
each location, and then sum them to give the forward
modeled image. For locations where we did not compute a
PSF, we interpolate one from the surrounding PSFs.
Poststack inversion of this image was computed using two
conventional inversion processes: simultaneous seismic
inversion (Rasmussen et al., 2004) and sequential seismic
inversion (Poggliagliomi and Allred, 1994) for comparison
with the proposed inversion algorithm outlined above.
Figure 3 shows the data used for this comparison (Figures
3a and 3b) and compares the results of the three inversion
approaches. Figures 3(c) to 3(f) show the acoustic
impedance after subtraction of a smooth background
model. The new inversion (Figure 3d) shows more
continuous reconstruction of the model than either of the
conventional inversions. The simultaneous inversion
(Figure 3f) method is similar to the new workflow, with the
main difference being that it uses a 1D spatially invariant
(or perhaps slowly varying) wavelet in the time domain.
This clearly prevents this inversion from recovering the
true reflectivity from zones where the image amplitudes are
distorted. Both of these methods use the same smooth prior
model. The sequential inversion (Figure 3e) uses a prior
model based on extrapolation of well data to determine the
scalar for the contribution of the seismic data to the
inversion result. In this case we used the assigned well
location shown in Figure 3(a), along with horizon picks
from the structural image to compute the prior model. This
allows better recovery of the true reflectivity for this
method, although it relies heavily on constructing an
accurate prior model. The new inversion shows better
recovery of the model through the weak image zone than
either of the other two inversion methods. This new
approach uses the measured response of the seismic
imaging workflow, the PSFs, so it relies less on
assumptions on the lateral stability of the data or the
accuracy of the prior model.

Our estimate of the H operator is obtained by demigration

followed by the prestack RTM workflow applied to point

2012 SEG
SEG Las Vegas 2012 Annual Meeting

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Inversion after depth imaging

Discussion and conclusions

We propose an alternative approach to applying
conventional inversion based on 1D convolutional
modeling, after depth imaging. We invert seismic data
directly in the depth domain, accounting for illumination
effects in the image by replacing the 1D wavelet in
conventional inversion with the point spread function of the
depth imaging processing. The synthetic example we
presented inverted an RTM image using PSFs generated
from
finite-difference
wave-equation
propagation.
However, the inversion algorithm could be applied using
PSFs (or a complete calculation of the Hessian) and images
generated using other cheaper propagators for geologies
that do not warrant a full wave solution. Even in simple
models, the ability to perform inversion directly in the
depth domain, rather than converting vertically to time and

having to estimate a consistent wavelet, may be worth the

increase in computational effort. Applied on field data,
matching filters will be required to calibrate the forward
modeled image with measurements from available wells.
Whilst we have shown an example of poststack acoustic
impedance inversion, the extention of this workflow to
perform AVO inversion of angle stacked depth images is
under investigation.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank WesternGeco for permission to publish
this work as well as James Rickett and Irina Marin for
valuable contributions and discussion.

(a)

(b)

Figure 1: Sigsbee2A model (a) stratigraphic velocity, (b) migration velocity.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2: (a) Prestack reverse-time migration image, (b) Point spread functions.

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Inversion after depth imaging

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Figure 3: Detailed zone of inversion. (a) the image, (b) PSFs, (c) true model acoustic impedance (after removing the background prior
model), (d) depth domain inversion, (e) sequential inversion and (f) simultaneous inversion.

2012 SEG
SEG Las Vegas 2012 Annual Meeting

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EDITED REFERENCES
Note: This reference list is a copy-edited version of the reference list submitted by the author. Reference lists for the 2012
SEG Technical Program Expanded Abstracts have been copy edited so t hat references provided with the online metadata for
each paper will achieve a high degree of linking to cited sources that appear on the Web.
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