PSDWII: Physical-Structure-Driven Waveform Inversion Imaging
Abstract
This paper proposes a Physical-Structure-Driven Waveform Inversion Imaging framework (PSDWII), grounded in the recognition that surface-recorded seismic data are directly related to subsurface virtual sources rather than to the model parameters themselves. Based on this recognition, we decompose seismic wave propagation into a three-step physical process: source excitation and incident wave propagation; interaction of the incident wave with heterogeneities, which generates virtual sources with distinct radiation patterns and excites secondary waves; and propagation and reception of the secondary waves. The adjoint of the propagation operator (reverse-time extrapolation) is then used to formulate a linear inversion projection for the virtual sources. By distinguishing different virtual-source expressions and their underlying physical mechanisms, we establish a unified mathematical representation for three inversion tasks: Full Waveform Inversion(FWI), stratigraphic physical properties imaging, and stratigraphic structures imaging. Deconvolution and linear inversion are respectively adopted to achieve multi-parameter decoupling in FWI and in angle-domain common-image gather inversion for stratigraphic physical properties imaging. The PSDWII framework shifts the conventional ``mathematical optimization driven'' paradigm of waveform inversion to a ``physical-structure-driven'' one. It neither constructs objective functions nor computes their gradients or Hessian inverses. Within this framework, we develop three specific methods: physical-structure-driven FWI (PSDFWI), physical-structure-driven stratigraphic physical properties imaging with angle-domain common-image gather inversion (PSDSI), and physical-structure-driven stratigraphic structures imaging (PSDMig).
Related
- Seismic imaging of the crust and upper mantle beneath Taiwan using full-waveform inversion of teleseismic body waves
- Seismic Imaging of the Crust From Long‐Offset Ocean‐Bottom Seismometer Data Using Time‐Domain Extended‐Source Full‐Waveform Inversion: Application to the Eastern Nankai Trough, Japan
- Structure-aware Bayesian full waveform inversion via diffusion-regularized Stein variational gradient descent
- Structure-dependent failure modes of neural priors in acoustic full-waveform inversion
- A comprehensive review of strategies to mitigate non-convexity in full waveform inversion
BibTeX
@misc{chen2026psdwii,
title = {{PSDWII: Physical-Structure-Driven Waveform Inversion Imaging}},
author = {Shengchang Chen},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.03380},
eprint = {2609.03380},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03380},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - PSDWII: Physical-Structure-Driven Waveform Inversion Imaging
AU - Shengchang Chen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.03380
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03380
AB - This paper proposes a Physical-Structure-Driven Waveform Inversion Imaging framework (PSDWII), grounded in the recognition that surface-recorded seismic data are directly related to subsurface virtual sources rather than to the model parameters themselves. Based on this recognition, we decompose seismic wave propagation into a three-step physical process: source excitation and incident wave propagation; interaction of the incident wave with heterogeneities, which generates virtual sources with distinct radiation patterns and excites secondary waves; and propagation and reception of the secondary waves. The adjoint of the propagation operator (reverse-time extrapolation) is then used to formulate a linear inversion projection for the virtual sources. By distinguishing different virtual-source expressions and their underlying physical mechanisms, we establish a unified mathematical representation for three inversion tasks: Full Waveform Inversion(FWI), stratigraphic physical properties imaging, and stratigraphic structures imaging. Deconvolution and linear inversion are respectively adopted to achieve multi-parameter decoupling in FWI and in angle-domain common-image gather inversion for stratigraphic physical properties imaging. The PSDWII framework shifts the conventional ``mathematical optimization driven'' paradigm of waveform inversion to a ``physical-structure-driven'' one. It neither constructs objective functions nor computes their gradients or Hessian inverses. Within this framework, we develop three specific methods: physical-structure-driven FWI (PSDFWI), physical-structure-driven stratigraphic physical properties imaging with angle-domain common-image gather inversion (PSDSI), and physical-structure-driven stratigraphic structures imaging (PSDMig).
ER -