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Time-lapse full-waveform inversion for elastic TTI media

YANHUA LIU1 ILYA TSVANKIN2
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1 Center for Wave Phenomena,
2 Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, 80401,
JSE 2024, 33(4), 01–20;
Submitted: 9 June 2025 | Revised: 9 June 2025 | Accepted: 9 June 2025 | Published: 9 June 2025
© 2025 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Time-lapse (4D) full-waveform inversion (FWI) of seismic data can help estimate the sub-surface changes due to hydrocarbon production and CO2 injection. Previously, we have developed a 4D FWI methodology for VTI (transversely isotropic with a vertical symmetry axis) media. However, the VTI algorithm fails to accurately reconstruct the 4D variations in the presence of dipping anisotropic layers that often cause a tilt of the symmetry axis. Here, we extend time-lapse FWI to 2D TI media with a tilted symmetry axis (TTI). The symmetry axis is assumed to be orthogonal to the reflectors, so its orientation can be es- timated from migrated depth images. The proposed algorithm is tested on the BP TTI model using three different time-lapse strategies. If the 4D data are repeatable, the param- eter changes can be reconstructed with sufficient accuracy even in the presence of moderate noise. We incorporate the “source-independent” FWI technique to mitigate the influence of errors in the estimated source wavelet and address the wavelet nonrepeatability in time- lapse data. In addition, we discuss the influence of several common nonrepeatability issues on the time-lapse inversion results. Testing on the BP model shows that the parallel- difference time-lapse method is more sensitive to nonrepeatability-related problems than the other employed 4D strategies.

Keywords
Waveform inversion
Seismic anisotropy
Inverse theory
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Electronic ISSN: 0963-0651 Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing