Full waveform inversion using preserved amplitude reverse time migration

A great deal of effort has been expended to improve the amplitude reliability of migration. The similarity of reverse time migration (RTM) to the gradient of full waveform inversion (FWI) indicates that preserved amplitude RTM can help improve FWI. We develop the theoretical derivation of an improved gradient for FWI based on common shot preserved amplitude RTM. We validate our approach on the Marmousi II model and the Chevron SEG 2014 dataset, showing that it significantly improves the convergence rate of FWI.