Multiparameter elastic full waveform inversion with improved facies-based regularization

Current efforts to utilize full waveform inversion as a tool beyond acoustic imaging applications, for example in reservoir analysis, faces inherent challenges related to the limited resolution and the potential trade-off between the elastic model parameters. Anisotropy parameters are insufficiently updated because of their minor contributions to the surface collected data. Since similar rock formations inside the Earth admit consistent elastic properties and relative values of elasticity and anisotropy parameters (this enables us to define them as a seismic facies), utilizing such localized facies information in FWI can improve the resolution of inverted parameters. We propose a novel approach to use facies-based constraints in elastic anisotropic FWI. We take the uncertainties of the estimated parameters (approximated by radiation patterns) into consideration and improve the quality of estimated facies maps iteratively. A 3D elastic vertical transverse isotropy (VTI) model is used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.