Some 3D applications of Full Waveform Inversion

Summary:
Since 25 years, several synthetic and real examples of Full Waveform
Inversion (FWI) have been published. The main advantages and
limitations of this approach have been explained in the 80's. It was
soon realized that FWI requires long offsets and low frequencies to
update the velocity background. Thanks to the improvements in
acquisition over the last 20 years, long offset data became available
and several research groups could demonstrate the relevance of FWI
with 2D data sets.

Over the last 5 years, the increase in computer power made 3D FWI
affordable at least with low frequency data. In this presentation, we
will present some of the 3D FWI results we obtained. Ocean Bottom
Seismometer (OBS) or Ocean Bottom Cable (OBC) data sets are well
suited to illustrate the power of FWI since they often contain long
offsets, wide azimuth and low frequencies. We will then discuss the
results we obtained on a Gulf of Mexico data set.