Full-waveform variational inference with full common-image gathers and diffusion network
Abstract
Accurate seismic imaging and velocity estimation are essential for subsurface characterization. Conventional inversion techniques, such as full-waveform inversion, remain computationally expensive and sensitive to initial velocity models. To address these challenges, we propose a simulation-based inference framework with conditional elucidated diffusion models for posterior velocity-model sampling. Our approach incorporates both horizontal and vertical subsurface offset common-image gathers to capture a broader range of reflector geometries, including gently dipping structures and steep dipping layers. Additionally, we introduce the background-velocity model as an input condition to enhance generalization across varying geological settings. We evaluate our method on the SEAM dataset, which features complex salt geometries, using a patch-based training approach. Experimental results demonstrate that adding the background-velocity model as an additional conditioning variable significantly enhances performance, improving SSIM from to and reducing RMSE from km/s to km/s. Furthermore, uncertainty quantification analysis shows that our proposed approach yields better-calibrated uncertainty estimates, reducing uncertainty calibration error from km/s to km/s. These results show robust amortized seismic inversion with uncertainty quantification.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.15289,
title = {Full-waveform variational inference with full common-image gathers and diffusion network},
author = {Yunlin Zeng and Huseyin Tuna Erdinc and Rafael Orozco and Felix Herrmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.15289},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
8 pages (excluding references), 8 figures