Elastic Full Waveform Inversion Workflow for Model Building and High-Resolution Imaging

Summary Seismic full waveform inversion (FWI) has become a crucial tool in Earth model building. Over the past years, its application has evolved and now FWI regularly delivers high-resolution images. In complex geological settings, artefacts often contaminate acoustic FWI results, limiting its applicability for velocity model building and high-resolution imaging. The need for elastic modelling in FWI was recognized in the 1980’s. However, the high computational cost of elastic FWI has prevented its use for real-sized inversion. Recent advancements in high-performance computing have made it possible to derive high-resolution velocity and impedance images using a workflow based on elastic FWI in which the distinction between model building and imaging is vanishing