Copula Transformations for Data-Consistent Inversion
Abstract
Data-consistent inversion (DCI) constructs probability measures whose push-forward distributions agree with observed data, while iterative data-consistent inversion (iDCI) extends this framework to generalized stochastic inverse problems by enforcing multiple push-forward constraints sequentially. Although iDCI avoids the direct approximation of high-dimensional joint densities, its relationship to the original joint DCI solution has remained unclear. In this work, we establish this relationship through copula theory. Using Sklar's theorem, we derive a factorization of the DCI update into separate marginal and dependence transformations and show that the discrepancy remaining after convergence of the iDCI algorithm is entirely characterized by the copulas associated with the observed and predicted joint distributions. This characterization motivates a copula-transformed iDCI solution, and we prove that an exact copula transformation recovers the original DCI solution. We further establish convergence results for approximate copula transformations under converging sequences of reference measures and progressively enriched feasible sets. Numerical examples demonstrate how the geometry induced by the quantity-of-interest map governs the importance of the copula transformation, illustrate an adaptive reference-measure refinement strategy for improving computational accuracy under a fixed sampling budget, and demonstrate the progressive refinement of generalized stochastic inverse problems through heterogeneous, asynchronously acquired experiments.
Related
BibTeX
@misc{butler2026copula,
title = {{Copula Transformations for Data-Consistent Inversion}},
author = {Troy Butler and Tianyi Jiang and João Silva and Harri Hakula and Timothy Wildey},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.02832},
eprint = {2609.02832},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02832},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Copula Transformations for Data-Consistent Inversion
AU - Troy Butler
AU - Tianyi Jiang
AU - João Silva
AU - Harri Hakula
AU - Timothy Wildey
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.02832
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02832
AB - Data-consistent inversion (DCI) constructs probability measures whose push-forward distributions agree with observed data, while iterative data-consistent inversion (iDCI) extends this framework to generalized stochastic inverse problems by enforcing multiple push-forward constraints sequentially. Although iDCI avoids the direct approximation of high-dimensional joint densities, its relationship to the original joint DCI solution has remained unclear. In this work, we establish this relationship through copula theory. Using Sklar's theorem, we derive a factorization of the DCI update into separate marginal and dependence transformations and show that the discrepancy remaining after convergence of the iDCI algorithm is entirely characterized by the copulas associated with the observed and predicted joint distributions. This characterization motivates a copula-transformed iDCI solution, and we prove that an exact copula transformation recovers the original DCI solution. We further establish convergence results for approximate copula transformations under converging sequences of reference measures and progressively enriched feasible sets. Numerical examples demonstrate how the geometry induced by the quantity-of-interest map governs the importance of the copula transformation, illustrate an adaptive reference-measure refinement strategy for improving computational accuracy under a fixed sampling budget, and demonstrate the progressive refinement of generalized stochastic inverse problems through heterogeneous, asynchronously acquired experiments.
ER -