No Arabic abstract
Inspired by recent work on extended image volumes that lays the ground for randomized probing of extremely large seismic wavefield matrices, we present a memory frugal and computationally efficient inversion methodology that uses techniques from randomized linear algebra. By means of a carefully selected realistic synthetic example, we demonstrate that we are capable of achieving competitive inversion results at a fraction of the memory cost of conventional full-waveform inversion with limited computational overhead. By exchanging memory for negligible computational overhead, we open with the presented technology the door towards the use of low-memory accelerators such as GPUs.
Thanks to the combination of state-of-the-art accelerators and highly optimized open software frameworks, there has been tremendous progress in the performance of deep neural networks. While these developments have been responsible for many breakthroughs, progress towards solving large-scale problems, such as video encoding and semantic segmentation in 3D, is hampered because access to on-premise memory is often limited. Instead of relying on (optimal) checkpointing or invertibility of the network layers -- to recover the activations during backpropagation -- we propose to approximate the gradient of convolutional layers in neural networks with a multi-channel randomized trace estimation technique. Compared to other methods, this approach is simple, amenable to analyses, and leads to a greatly reduced memory footprint. Even though the randomized trace estimation introduces stochasticity during training, we argue that this is of little consequence as long as the induced errors are of the same order as errors in the gradient due to the use of stochastic gradient descent. We discuss the performance of networks trained with stochastic backpropagation and how the error can be controlled while maximizing memory usage and minimizing computational overhead.
Seismic wave propagation forms the basis for most aspects of seismological research, yet solving the wave equation is a major computational burden that inhibits the progress of research. This is exaspirated by the fact that new simulations must be performed when the velocity structure or source location is perturbed. Here, we explore a prototype framework for learning general solutions using a recently developed machine learning paradigm called Neural Operator. A trained Neural Operator can compute a solution in negligible time for any velocity structure or source location. We develop a scheme to train Neural Operators on an ensemble of simulations performed with random velocity models and source locations. As Neural Operators are grid-free, it is possible to evaluate solutions on higher resolution velocity models than trained on, providing additional computational efficiency. We illustrate the method with the 2D acoustic wave equation and demonstrate the methods applicability to seismic tomography, using reverse mode automatic differentiation to compute gradients of the wavefield with respect to the velocity structure. The developed procedure is nearly an order of magnitude faster than using conventional numerical methods for full waveform inversion.
Seismic attributes calculated by conventional methods are susceptible to noise. Conventional filtering reduces the noise in the cost of losing the spectral bandwidth. The challenge of having a high-resolution and robust signal processing tool motivated us to propose a sparse time-frequency decomposition while is stabilized for random noise. The procedure initiates by using Sparsity-based adaptive S-transform to regularize abrupt variations in frequency content of the nonstationary signals. Then, considering the fact that a higher amplitude of a frequency component results in a higher signal to noise ratio, an adaptive filter is applied to the time-frequency spectrum which is sparcified previously. The proposed zero adaptive filter enhances the high amplitude frequency components while suppresses the lower ones. The performance of the proposed method is compared to the sparse S-transform and the robust window Hilbert transform in estimation of instantaneous attributes by applying on synthetic and real data sets. Seismic attributes estimated by the proposed method is superior to the conventional ones in terms of its robustness and high resolution image. The proposed approach has a vast application in interpretation and identification of geological structures.
Seismic full-waveform inversion (FWI), which uses iterative methods to estimate high-resolution subsurface models from seismograms, is a powerful imaging technique in exploration geophysics. In recent years, the computational cost of FWI has grown exponentially due to the increasing size and resolution of seismic data. Moreover, it is a non-convex problem and can encounter local minima due to the limited accuracy of the initial velocity models or the absence of low frequencies in the measurements. To overcome these computational issues, we develop a multiscale data-driven FWI method based on fully convolutional networks (FCN). In preparing the training data, we first develop a real-time style transform method to create a large set of synthetic subsurface velocity models from natural images. We then develop two convolutional neural networks with encoder-decoder structure to reconstruct the low- and high-frequency components of the subsurface velocity models, separately. To validate the performance of our data-driven inversion method and the effectiveness of the synthesized training set, we compare it with conventional physics-based waveform inversion approaches using both synthetic and field data. These numerical results demonstrate that, once our model is fully trained, it can significantly reduce the computation time, and yield more accurate subsurface velocity models in comparison with conventional FWI.
Most of the seismic inversion techniques currently proposed focus on robustness with respect to the background model choice or inaccurate physical modeling assumptions, but are not apt to large-scale 3D applications. On the other hand, methods that are computationally feasible for industrial problems, such as full waveform inversion, are notoriously bogged down by local minima and require adequate starting models. We propose a novel solution that is both scalable and less sensitive to starting model or inaccurate physics when compared to full waveform inversion. The method is based on a dual (Lagrangian) reformulation of the classical wavefield reconstruction inversion, whose robustness with respect to local minima is well documented in the literature. However, it is not suited to 3D, as it leverages expensive frequency-domain solvers for the wave equation. The proposed reformulation allows the deployment of state-of-the-art time-domain finite-difference methods, and is computationally mature for industrial scale problems.