Approximate non-linear multiparameter inversion with single and double scattering seismic wavefields in acoustic media

Abstract

An approach for approximate direct quadratic non-linear inversion in two-parameter (density and bulk modulus) heterogeneous acoustic media is being presented and discussed in this paper. The approach consists of two parts: the first is a linear generalized Radon transform (GRT) migration procedure based on the weighted true-amplitude summation of pre-stack seismic scattered data that is adapted to a virtually arbitrary observing system, and the second is a non-iterative quadratic inversion operation, produced from the explicit expression of amplitude radiation pattern that is acting on the migrated data. This ensures the asymptotic inversion can continue to simultaneously locate the discontinuities and reconstruct the size of the discontinuities in the perturbation parameters describing the acoustic media. We identify that the amplitude radiation pattern is the binary quadratic combination of the parameters in the process of formulating non-linear inverse scattering problems based on second-order Born approximation. The coefficients of the quadratic terms are computed by appropriately handling the double scattering effects. These added quadratic terms provide a better amplitude correction for the parameters inversion. Through numerical tests, we show that for strong perturbations, the errors of the linear inversion are significant and unacceptable. In contrast, the quadratic non-linear inversion can give fairly accurate inversion results and keep almost the same computational complexity as conventional GRT liner inversion.