Application of Optimal Transport Theory in Seismic Full Waveform Inversion

Miao YU, Jean-Pierre Vilotte, Jean-David Benamou — Congrès des Doctorants (CDD), Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), 2017

Conference Poster

Abstract

We present early results on applying optimal transport theory — specifically the Kantorovich–Rubinstein (W1) distance — as an alternative misfit function for seismic full waveform inversion. Compared to the standard L2 norm, the W1 distance exhibits improved convexity properties that help mitigate the cycle-skipping phenomenon, a fundamental challenge in large-scale seismic imaging. Numerical experiments on synthetic models demonstrate enhanced convergence behavior, motivating further development of entropic regularized variants for practical deployment.