Determining acoustic impedance cube by inverting seismic data using feedforward and radial basis neural networks in an Iranian oilfield

Accurate three-dimensional acoustic impedance modeling in offshore clastic reservoirs remains a significant challenge due to sparse well control and the highly nonlinear relationship between seismic attributes and subsurface elastic properties. This study introduces an integrated, physics-guided machine learning (ML) workflow that combines rock-physics-driven pseudo-well generation with neural networks to directly map seismic attributes to acoustic impedance under data-limited conditions. A soft-sand rock physics workflow was applied, in which grain moduli were determined using the Voigt-Reuss-Hill average. The dry rock frame was modeled at critical porosity by Hertz-Mindlin contact theory and then interpolated toward zero porosity using the Modified Hashin-Shtrikman lower bound. Gassmann fluid substitution was subsequently performed. Using this approach, 45 pseudo-wells were generated and conditioned through lithofacies classification and spatial statistics, mitigating the risk of overfitting associated with the three available real wells. Six seismic attributes-envelope, RMS amplitude, instantaneous phase, instantaneous frequency, quadrature trace, and sweetness-were selected as predictors. Two neural architectures, a multi-layer feedforward network (MLFN) and a radial basis function network (RBFN), were trained and benchmarked using a leave-one-well-out cross-validation scheme. The MLFN achieved higher predictive accuracy (CC = 0.87, NRMSE = 0.493) compared to the RBFN (CC = 0.79, NRMSE = 0.613), which may reflect its greater capacity to model broader hierarchical relationships between seismic attributes and acoustic impedance. The resulting impedance volume delineates laterally coherent high-impedance sandstone units and low-impedance porous intervals consistent with geological interpretation. These results suggest that integrating physics-guided pseudo-well augmentation with feed-forward neural networks offers a practical and computationally efficient approach for acoustic impedance inversion in data-limited offshore settings. Future work may explore validation across diverse geological settings to assess the robustness and transferability of the proposed methodology. This study provides a basis for hybrid and uncertainty-aware inversion frameworks that may help address complexities in heterogeneous reservoir systems, highlighting the importance of reproducible and widely applicable data-driven seismic inversion methods under sparse well control.