@mastersthesis {zhang2023THlsw,
	title = {Large scale wavefield reconstruction via weighted matrix factorization and seismic survey design},
	year = {2023},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {06},
	school = {Georgia Institute of Technology},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Atlanta},
	abstract = {Seismic data acquisition plays a crucial role in identifying potential oil and gas reservoirs during the early phases of exploration. However, obtaining finely sampled seismic data can be costly and physically impossible. Recent developments in Compressive Sensing have resulted in seismic data being increasingly collected at random along spatial coordinates. Although random sampling improves acquisition efficiency, it shifts the burden from seismic acquisition to data processing. Wavefield recovery is one of the required processes for reconstructing fully seismic data from coarsely subsampled data. Among the various techniques proposed for wavefield reconstruction, matrix completion methods are computationally efficient and straightforward to implement. These methods exploit the low-rank structure of fully seismic data. However, matrix completion performs well at low-to-mid frequencies and degrades at higher frequencies due to the failure of low-rank structure to accurately approximate higher frequencies. To address this issue, this thesis proposed a recursively weighted matrix completion method. Although effective, this method is computationally expensive, and a more efficient method for handling 2D seismic data was also proposed. Compared to 2D seismic data, 3D seismic data can detect reflections outside of the 2D plane but poses a computational challenge due to its large scale. To overcome this challenge, this thesis proposed a parallel weighted reconstruction method to improve the reconstruction of 3D seismic data. Land seismic data presents a greater challenge due to contamination by ground roll, which consists of surface waves with a high spatial frequency content and large amplitude. To address this issue, a practical workflow was proposed in this thesis to improve the recovery of land seismic data. Although matrix completion is an efficient technique for reconstructing fully seismic data, the optimal acquisition design is still being investigated. Recent studies have shown that the spectral gap can be used to predict and characterize the quality of wavefield reconstruction via matrix completion for a given subsampling mask. Based on these findings, a simulation-free seismic survey design for both 2D and 3D seismic data was proposed in this thesis to obtain an improved subsampling survey by minimizing the spectral gap ratio. Furthermore, this concept was extended to the design of a time-lapse seismic survey, which is essential for reservoir management and monitoring geological carbon storage but is difficult and expensive to acquire. To improve the reconstruction of the time-lapse wavefield, a joint recovery model was proposed that leverages the benefits of the non-replicated baseline and monitor subsampled seismic data. A time-lapse seismic survey design that incorporates the joint recovery model with spectral gap was proposed to generate sparse, non-replicated time-lapse acquisition geometries that favor wavefield recovery.},
	keywords = {5D reconstruction, Acquisition, compressed sensing, frequency-domain, JRM, matrix factorization, parallel, PhD, signal processing, spectral gap, survey design, time-lapse, wavefield reconstruction},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2023/zhang2023THlsw/zhang2023THlsw.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2023/zhang2023THlsw/zhang2023THlsw_pres.pdf},
	url2 = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2023/zhang2023THlsw},
	author = {Yijun Zhang}
}
@mastersthesis {siahkoohi2022THdgmf,
	title = {Deep generative models for solving geophysical inverse problems},
	year = {2022},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {07},
	school = {Georgia Institute of Technology},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Atlanta},
	abstract = {My thesis presents several novel methods to facilitate solving large-scale inverse problems by utilizing recent advances in machine learning, and particularly deep generative modeling. Inverse problems involve reliably estimating unknown parameters of a physical model from indirect observed data that are noisy. Solving inverse problems presents primarily two challenges. The first challenge is to capture and incorporate prior knowledge into ill-posed inverse problems whose solutions cannot be uniquely identified. The second challenge is the computational complexity of solving inverse problems, particularly the cost of quantifying uncertainty. The main goal of this thesis is to address these issues by developing practical data-driven methods that are scalable to geophysical applications in which access to high-quality training data is often limited. There are six papers included in this thesis. A majority of these papers focus on addressing computational challenges associated with Bayesian inference and uncertainty quantification, while others focus on developing regularization techniques to improve inverse problem solution quality and accelerate the solution process. These papers demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methods to seismic imaging, a large-scale geophysical inverse problem with a computationally expensive forward operator for which sufficiently capturing the variability in the Earth{\textquoteright}s heterogeneous subsurface through a training dataset is challenging. The first two papers present computationally feasible methods of applying a class of methods commonly referred to as deep priors to seismic imaging and uncertainty quantification. I also present a systematic Bayesian approach to translate uncertainty in seismic imaging to uncertainty in downstream tasks performed on the image. The next two papers aim to address the reliability concerns surrounding data-driven methods for solving Bayesian inverse problems by leveraging variational inference formulations that offer the benefits of fully-learned posteriors while being directly informed by physics and data. The last two papers are concerned with correcting forward modeling errors where the first proposes an adversarially learned postprocessing step to attenuate numerical dispersion artifacts in wave-equation simulations due to coarse finite-difference discretizations, while the second trains a Fourier neural operator surrogate forward model in order to accelerate the qualification of uncertainty due to errors in the forward model parameterization.},
	keywords = {Bayesian inference, deep learning, Generative models, Geophysics, Inverse problems, PhD},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2022/siahkoohi2022THdgmf/siahkoohi2022THdgmf.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2022/siahkoohi2022THdgmf/siahkoohi2022THdgmf_pres.pdf},
	author = {Ali Siahkoohi}
}
@mastersthesis {sharan2020THlsh,
	title = {Large scale high-frequency seismic wavefield reconstruction, acquisition via rank minimization and sparsity-promoting source estimation},
	year = {2020},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {11},
	school = {Georgia Institute of Technology},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Atlanta},
	abstract = {Seismic data reconstruction on a dense periodic grid from seismic data acquired on a coarse grid is a common approach followed by most of the oil \& gas companies. This approach allows them to save on operationally challenging and expensive dense seismic data acquisition. Dense seismic data is one of the key requirements for generating high-resolution images of earth{\textquoteright}s subsurface for exploration and production decisions. Based on the Compressive Sensing (CS) paradigm, low-rank matrix factorization based seismic data reconstruction methods are computationally cheaper and scalable to large datasets in comparison to sparsity-promotion based methods. The sparsity-promotion based methods are based on transformation in certain transform domains that can be computationally expensive for large datasets. Although, low-rank matrix factorization based methods perform well at lower frequencies, their performance degrades at higher frequencies due to increase in rank of approximating matrix. One of the contributions of this thesis is a recursively weighted matrix factorization approach to improve the quality of reconstructed data at higher frequencies. This recursively weighted approach exploits the similarity between adjacent frequency slices. Although, recursively weighted method improves the data reconstruction quality at higher frequencies, it can be computationally expensive for large scale seismic datasets. This is because of the interdependence of frequencies preventing simultaneous reconstruction of frequencies. Another contribution of this thesis is a computationally efficient recursively weighted framework for large scale dataset by parallelizing data reconstruction over rows of low-rank factors of each frequency slices. To reduce the cost and turnaround time of seismic data acquisition simultaneous source acquisition is adapted by the oil and gas industry in last few years. Another contribution of this thesis is a low-rank based method for simultaneous separation and reconstruction of seismic data on a dense periodic grid from large scale seismic data acquired with simultaneous source acquisition. Next part of this thesis focuses on accurate detection of fractures created by hydraulic fracturing in unconventional reservoirs for economical production of oil and gas. Fracturing of rocks during hydraulic fracturing gives rise to microseismic events, which are localized along these fractures. In this work, a sparsity-promoting microseismic source estimation framework is proposed to detect closely spaced microseismic sources along with estimation of their associated source-time functions from noisy microseismic data recorded by receivers along the earth{\textquoteright}s surface or along monitor wells. Detecting closely spaced microseismic events helps in delineating fractures and estimation of source-time function is useful in estimating fracture{\textquoteright}s origin in time. Also, source-time functions can be potentially useful for estimating the source-mechanism. Also, this method does not make any prior assumption on number of microseismic sources or shape of their source-time functions. Therefore, this method is useful for detecting microseismic sources with different source signatures and frequency content. Last part of this thesis focuses on sparsity-promoting photoacoustic imaging to detect photoabsorbers along with estimating the associated source-time functions. Traditional photoacoustic imaging can only estimate the locations of photoacoustic absorbers. Also, traditional methods require dense transducer coverage whereas sparsity-promotion based method can work with reduced transducer sampling reducing the overall data storage cost.},
	keywords = {compressed sensing, low-rank, PhD, Sparsity-promoting, wavefield reconstruction},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/sharan2020THlsh/sharan2020THlsh.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/sharan2020THlsh/sharan2020THlsh_pres.pdf},
	author = {Shashin Sharan}
}
@mastersthesis {louboutin2020THmfi,
	title = {Modeling for inversion in exploration geophysics},
	year = {2020},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {03},
	school = {Georgia Institute of Technology},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Atlanta},
	abstract = {Seismic inversion, and more generally geophysical exploration, aims at better understanding the earth{\textquoteright}s subsurface, which is one of today{\textquoteright}s most important challenges. Firstly, it contains natural resources that are critical to our technologies such as water, minerals and oil and gas. Secondly, monitoring the subsurface in the context of CO2 sequestration, earthquake detection and global seismology are of major interests with regard to safety and the environment hazards. However, the technologies to monitor the subsurface or find resources are scientifically extremely challenging. Seismic inversion can be formulated as a mathematical optimization problem that minimizes the difference between field recorded data and numerically modeled synthetic data. The process of solving this optimization problem then requires to numerically model, thousands of times, wave-propagation in large three-dimensional representations of part of the earth subsurface. The mathematical and computational complexity of this problem, therefore, calls for software design that abstracts these requirements and facilitates algorithm and software development. My thesis addresses some of the challenges that arise from these problems; mainly the computational cost and access to the right software for research and development. In the first part, I will discuss a performance metric that improves the current runtime-only benchmarks in exploration geophysics. This metric, the roofline model, first provides insight at the hardware level of the performance of a given implementation relative to the maximum achievable performance. Second, this study demonstrates that the choice of numerical discretization has a major impact on the achievable performance depending on the hardware at hand and shows that a flexible framework with respect to the discretization parameters is necessary. In the second part, I will introduce and describe Devito, a symbolic finite-difference DSL that provides a high-level interface to the definition of partial differential equations (PDE) such as the wave equation. Devito, from the symbolic definition of PDEs, then generates and compiles highly optimized C code on-the-fly to compute the solution of the PDE. The combination of the high-level abstractions and the just-in-time compiler enable research for geophysical exploration and PDE-constrainted optimization based on the paradigm of separation of concerns. This allows researchers to concentrate on their respective field of study while having access to computationally performant solvers with a flexible and easy to use interface to successfully implement complex representations of the physics. The second part of my thesis will be split into two sub-parts; first describing the symbolic application programming interface (API), before describing and benchmarking the just-in-time compiler. I will end my thesis with concluding remarks, the latest developments and a brief description of projects that were enabled by Devito.},
	keywords = {finite-differences, FWI, HPC, Imaging, inversion, Modeling, performance, PhD, RTM},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/louboutin2020THmfi/louboutin2020THmfi.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/louboutin2020THmfi/louboutin2020THmfi_pres.pdf},
	author = {Mathias Louboutin}
}
@mastersthesis {yang2020THsiw,
	title = {Seismic imaging with extended image volumes and source estimation},
	year = {2020},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {03},
	school = {Georgia Institute of Technology},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Atlanta},
	abstract = {Seismic imaging is an important tool for the exploration and production of oil \& gas, carbon sequestration, and the mitigation of geohazards. Through the process of seismic migration, images of subsurface geological structures are created from data collected at the surface. These images reflect changes in the physical rock properties such as wave speed and density. While significant progress has been made in the development of 3D imaging technology for complex geological areas, several challenges remain, some of which are addressed in this thesis. The first main contribution of this thesis is in the area of creating so-called subsurface-offset gathers, which play an increasingly important role in seismic imaging because they provide a multitude of information ranging from the reflection mechanism itself to information of the dips of specific reflectors and the accuracy of the background velocity model. Unfortunately, the formation and manipulation of these gathers come with exceedingly high computational and storage costs because extended image volumes are quadratic in the image size. These high costs are avoided by using techniques from modern randomized linear algebra that allow for compression of extended image volumes into low-rank factorized form{\textemdash}i.e., the image volume is approximately written as an outer product of a tall and a wide matrix. It is demonstrated that this factorization provides access to different types of sub-surface offset gathers, including common-image (point) gathers, without the need to explicitly form this outer product. As a result, challenging steep dip imaging situations, where conventional horizontal offset gathers no longer focus, can be handled. Moreover, extended image volumes for one background velocity model can directly be mapped to those of another background velocity model. As a result, factorization costs are incurred only once when examining imaging scenarios for different background velocity models. The second main contribution of this thesis is on the development of computationally efficient sparsity-promoting imaging techniques and on-the-fly source estimation. In this work, an adaptive technique is proposed where the unknown time signature of the sources is estimated during imaging. Without accurate knowledge of these source signatures, seismic images can be wrongly positioned and can have the wrong amplitudes hampering subsequent geophysical and geological interpretations. With the presented technique, this problem is mitigated. Finally, a contribution is made to address the detrimental effects of surface-related multiples. If not handled correctly, these multiples give rise to unwanted artifacts in the image. A new technique is introduced to address this issue in realistic settings where there is a strong density contrast at the ocean bottom. As a result, the surface-related multiples are mapped to the reflectors. Because bounce points at the surface can be considered as sources, this mapping of the multiples rather than removal increases the subsurface illumination.},
	keywords = {extended image volumes, low rank, multiples, PhD, randomized linear algebra, source estimation, sparsity-promoting inversion},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/yang2020THsiw/yang2020THsiw.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/yang2020THsiw/yang2020THsiw_pres.pdf},
	author = {Mengmeng Yang}
}
@mastersthesis {witte2020THsal,
	title = {Software and algorithms for large-scale seismic inverse problems},
	year = {2020},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {02},
	school = {Georgia Institute of Technology},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Atlanta},
	abstract = {Seismic imaging and parameter estimation are an import class of inverse problems with practical relevance in resource exploration, carbon control and monitoring systems for geohazards. The goal of seismic inverse problems is to image subsurface geological structures and estimate physical rock properties such as wave speed or density. Mathematically, this can be achieved by solving an optimization problem in which we minimize the mismatch between numerically modeled data and observed data from a seismic survey. As wave propagation through a medium is described by wave equations, seismic inverse problems involve solving a large number of partial differential equations (PDEs) during numerical optimization using finite difference modeling, making them computationally expensive. Additionally, seismic inverse problems are typically ill-posed, non-convex or ill-conditioned, thus making them challenging from a mathematical standpoint as well. Similar to the field of deep learning, this calls for software that is not only optimized for performance, but also enables geophysical domain specialists to experiment with algorithms in high-level programming languages and using different computing environments, such as high-performance computing (HPC) clusters or the cloud. Furthermore, they call for the adaption of dimensionality reduction techniques and stochastic algorithms to address computational cost from the algorithmic side. This thesis makes three distinct contributions to address computational challenges encountered in seismic inverse problems and to facilitate algorithmic development in this field. Part one introduces a large-scale framework for seismic modeling and inversion based on the paradigm of separation of concerns, which combines a user interface based on domain specific abstractions with a Python package for automatic code generation to solve the underlying PDEs. The modular code structure makes it possible to manage the complexity of a seismic inversion code, while matrix-free linear operators and data containers enable the implementation of algorithms in a fashion that closely resembles the underlying mathematical notation. The second contribution of this thesis is an algorithm for seismic imaging, that addresses its high computational cost and large memory imprint through a combination of on-the-fly Fourier transforms, stochastic sampling techniques and sparsity-promoting optimization. The algorithm combines the best of both time- and frequency-domain inversion, as the memory imprint is independent of the number of modeled time steps, while time-to-frequency conversions avoid the need to solve Helmholtz equations, which involve inverting ill-conditioned matrices. Part three of this thesis introduces a novel approach for adapting the cloud for high-performance computing applications like seismic imaging, which does not rely on a fixed cluster of permanently running virtual machines. Instead, computational resources are automatically started and terminated by the cloud environment during runtime and the workflow takes advantage of cloud-native technologies such as event-driven computations and containerized batch processing. The performance and cost analysis shows that this approach is able to address current shortcomings of the cloud such as inferior resilience, while at the same time reducing operating cost up to an order of magnitude. As such, the workflow provides a strategy for cost effectively running large-scale seismic imaging problems in the cloud and is a viable alternative to conventional HPC clusters.},
	keywords = {algorithms, AWS, FWI, Imaging, PhD, RTM, seismic, software},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/witte2020THsal/witte2020THsal.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2020/witte2020THsal/witte2020THsal_pres.pdf},
	author = {Philipp A. Witte}
}
@mastersthesis {peters2019THiso,
	title = {Intersections and sums of sets for the regularization of inverse problems},
	year = {2019},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {05},
	school = {The University of British Columbia},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Vancouver},
	abstract = {Inverse problems in the imaging sciences encompass a variety of applications. The primary problem of interest is the identification of physical parameters from observed data that come from experiments governed by partial-differential-equations. The secondary type of imaging problems attempts to reconstruct images and video that are corrupted by, for example, noise, subsampling, blur, or saturation. The quality of the solution of an inverse problem is sensitive to issues such as noise and missing entries in the data. The non-convex seismic full-waveform inversion problem suffers from parasitic local minima that lead to wrong solutions that may look realistic even for noiseless data. To meet some of these challenges, I propose solution strategies that constrain the model parameters at every iteration to help guide the inversion. To arrive at this goal, I present new practical workflows, algorithms, and software, that avoid manual tuning-parameters and that allow us to incorporate multiple pieces of prior knowledge. Opposed to penalty methods, I avoid balancing the influence of multiple pieces of prior knowledge by working with intersections of constraint sets. I explore and present advantages of constraints for imaging. Because the resulting problems are often non-trivial to solve, especially on large 3D grids, I introduce faster algorithms, dedicated to computing projections onto intersections of multiple sets. To connect prior knowledge more directly to problem formulations, I also combine ideas from additive models, such as cartoon-texture decomposition and robust principal component analysis, with intersections of multiple constraint sets for the regularization of inverse problems. The result is an extension of the concept of a Minkowski set. Examples from non-unique physical parameter estimation problems show that constraints in combination with projection methods provide control over the model properties at every iteration. This can lead to improved results when the constraints are carefully relaxed.},
	keywords = {FWI, Optimization, PhD, regularization, Sets},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2019/peters2019THiso/peters2019THiso.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2019/peters2019THiso/peters2019THiso_pres.pdf},
	author = {Bas Peters}
}
@mastersthesis {fang2018THsea,
	title = {Source estimation and uncertainty quantification for wave-equation based seismic imaging and inversion},
	year = {2018},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {04},
	school = {The University of British Columbia},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Vancouver},
	abstract = {In modern seismic exploration, wave-equation-based inversion and imaging approaches are widely employed for their potential of creating high-resolution subsurface images from seismic data by using the wave equation to describe the underlying physical model of wave propagation. Despite their successful practical applications, some key issues remain unsolved, including local minima, unknown sources, and the largely missing uncertainty analyses for the inversion. This thesis aims to address the following two aspects: to perform the inversion without prior knowledge of sources, and to quantify uncertainties in the inversion. The unknown source can hinder the success of wave-equation-based ap- proaches. A simple time shift in the source can lead to misplaced reflectors in linearized inversions or large disturbances in nonlinear problems. Unfortunately, accurate sources are typically unknown in real problems. The first major contribution of this thesis is, given the fact that the wave equation linearly depends on the sources, I have proposed on-the-fly source estimation techniques for the following wave-equation-based approaches: (1) time-domain sparsity-promoting least-squares reverse-time migration; and (2) wavefield-reconstruction inversion. Considering the linear dependence of the wave equation on the sources, I project out the sources by solving a linear least-squares problem, which enables us to conduct successful wave- equation-based inversions without prior knowledge of the sources. Wave-equation-based approaches also produce uncertainties in the resulting velocity model due to the noisy data, which would influence the subsequent exploration and financial decisions. The difficulties related to practical uncertainty quantification lie in: (1) expensive computation related to wave-equation solves, and (2) the nonlinear parameter-to-data map. The second major contribution of this thesis is the proposal of a computationally feasible Bayesian framework to analyze uncertainties in the resulting velocity models. Through relaxing the wave-equation constraints, I obtain a less nonlinear parameter-to-data map and a posterior distribution that can be adequately approximated by a Gaussian distribution. I derive an implicit formulation to construct the covariance matrix of the Gaussian distribution, which allows us to sample the Gaussian distribution in a computationally efficient manner. I demonstrate that the proposed Bayesian framework can provide adequately accurate uncertainty analyses for intermediate to large- scale problems with an acceptable computational cost.},
	keywords = {FWI, LS-RTM, PhD, source estimation, UQ, WRI},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2018/fang2018THsea/fang2018THsea.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2018/fang2018THsea/fang2018THsea_pres.pdf},
	author = {Zhilong Fang}
}
@mastersthesis {oghenekohwo2017THetl,
	title = {Economic time-lapse seismic acquisition and imaging{\textendash}-Reaping the benefits of randomized sampling with distributed compressive sensing},
	year = {2017},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {08},
	school = {The University of British Columbia},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Vancouver},
	abstract = {This thesis presents a novel viewpoint on the implicit opportunities randomized surveys bring to time-lapse seismic - which is a proven surveillance tool for hydrocarbon reservoir monitoring. Time-lapse (4D) seismic combines acquisition and processing of at least two seismic datasets (or vintages) in order to extract information related to changes in a reservoir within a specified time interval. The current paradigm places stringent requirements on replicating the 4D surveys, which is an expensive task often requiring uneconomical dense sampling of seismic wavefields. To mitigate the challenges of dense sampling, several advances in seismic acquisition have been made in recent years including the use of multiple sources firing at near simultaneous random times, and the adaptation of Compressive Sensing (CS) principles to design practical acquisition engines that improve sampling efficiency for seismic data acquisition. However, little is known regarding the implications of these developments for time-lapse studies. By conducting multiple experiments modelling surveys adhering to the principles of CS for 4D seismic, I propose a model that demonstrates the feasibility of randomized acquisitions for time-lapse seismic. The proposed joint recovery model (JRM), which derives from distributed CS, exploits the common information in time-lapse data during recovery of dense wavefields from measured subsampled data, providing highly repeatable and high-fidelity vintages. I show that we obtain better vintages when randomized surveys are not replicated, in contrast to standard practice, paving the way for an opportunity to relax the rigorous requirement to replicate surveys precisely. We assert that the vintages obtained using our proposed model are of sufficient quality to serve as inputs to processes that extract time-lapse attributes from which subsurface changes are deduced. Additionally, I show that recovery with the JRM is robust with respect to errors due to differences between actual and recorded postplot information. Finally, I present an opportunity to adapt our model to problems related to time-lapse seismic imaging where the main finding is that we can better delineate time-lapse changes by adapting the joint recovery model to wave-equation based inversion methods.},
	keywords = {Acquisition, Compressive Sensing, distributed compressive sensing, joint recovery, PhD, thesis, time lapse},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/oghenekohwo2017THetl/oghenekohwo2017THetl.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/oghenekohwo2017THetl/oghenekohwo2017THetl_pres.pdf},
	author = {Felix Oghenekohwo}
}
@mastersthesis {kumar2017THels,
	title = {Enabling large-scale seismic data acquisition, processing and waveform-inversion via rank-minimization},
	year = {2017},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {08},
	school = {The University of British Columbia},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Vancouver},
	abstract = {In this thesis, I adapt ideas from the field of compressed sensing to mitigate the computational and memory bottleneck of seismic processing workflows such as missing-trace interpolation, source separation and wave-equation based inversion for large-scale 3- and 5-D seismic data. For interpolation and source separation using rank-minimization, I propose three main ingredients, namely a rank-revealing transform domain, a subsampling scheme that increases the rank in the transform domain, and a practical large-scale data-consistent rank-minimization framework, which avoids the need for expensive computation of singular value decompositions. We also devise a wave-equation based factorization approach that removes computational bottlenecks and provides access to the kinematics and amplitudes of full-subsurface offset extended images via actions of full extended image volumes on probing vectors, which I use to perform the amplitude-versus- angle analyses and automatic wave-equation migration velocity analyses on complex geological environments. After a brief overview of matrix completion techniques in Chapter 1, we propose a singular value decomposition (SVD)-free factorization based rank-minimization approach for large-scale matrix completion problems. Then, I extend this framework to deal with large-scale seismic data interpolation problems, where I show that the standard approach of partitioning the seismic data into windows is not required, which use the fact that events tend to become linear in these windows, while exploiting the low-rank structure of seismic data. Carefully selected synthetic and realistic seismic data examples validate the efficacy of the interpolation framework. Next, I extend the SVD-free rank-minimization approach to remove the seismic cross-talk in simultaneous source acquisition. Experimental results verify that source separation using the SVD-free rank-minimization approaches are comparable to the sparsity-promotion based techniques; however, separation via rank-minimization is significantly faster and memory efficient. We further introduce a matrix-vector formulation to form full-subsurface extended image volumes, which removes the storage and computational bottleneck found in the convention methods. I demonstrate that the proposed matrix-vector formulation is used to form different image gathers with which amplitude-versus-angle and wave-equation migration velocity analyses is performed, without requiring prior information on the geologic dips. Finally, I conclude the thesis by outlining potential future research directions and extensions of the thesis work.},
	keywords = {Acquisition, extended image volumes, migration velocity analysis, PhD, Processing, rank minimization, waveform inversion},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/kumar2017THels/kumar2017THels.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/kumar2017THels/kumar2017THels_pres.pdf},
	author = {Rajiv Kumar}
}
@mastersthesis {dasilva2017THlso,
	title = {Large-scale optimization algorithms for missing data completion and inverse problems},
	year = {2017},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {09},
	school = {The University of British Columbia},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Vancouver},
	abstract = {Inverse problems are an important class of problems found in many areas of science and engineering. In these problems, one aims to estimate unknown parameters of a physical system through indirect multi-experiment measurements. Inverse problems arise in a number of fields including seismology, medical imaging, and astronomy, among others. An important aspect of inverse problems is the quality of the acquired data itself. Real-world data acquisition restrictions, such as time and budget constraints, often results in measured data with missing entries. Many inversion algorithms assume that the input data is fully sampled and relatively noise free and produce poor results when these assumptions are violated. Given the multidimensional nature of real-world data, we propose a new low-rank optimization method on the smooth manifold of Hierarchical Tucker tensors. Tensors that exhibit this low-rank structure can be recovered from solving this non-convex program in an efficient manner. We successfully interpolate realistically sized seismic data volumes using this approach. If our low-rank tensor is corrupted with non-Gaussian noise, the resulting optimization program can be formulated as a convex-composite problem. This class of problems involves minimizing a non-smooth but convex objective composed with a nonlinear smooth mapping. In this thesis, we develop a level set method for solving composite-convex problems and prove that the resulting subproblems converge linearly. We demonstrate that this method is competitive when applied to examples in noisy tensor completion, analysis-based compressed sensing, audio declipping, total-variation deblurring and denoising, and one-bit compressed sensing. With respect to solving the inverse problem itself, we introduce a new software design framework that manages the cognitive complexity of the various components involved. Our framework is modular by design, which enables us to easily integrate and replace components such as linear solvers, finite difference stencils, preconditioners, and parallelization schemes. As a result, a researcher using this framework can formulate her algorithms with respect to high-level components such as objective functions and hessian operators. We showcase the ease with which one can prototype such algorithms in a 2D test problem and, with little code modification, apply the same method to large-scale 3D problems.},
	keywords = {convex composite, interpolation, low-rank, Optimization, PhD, software design, tensor, tensor completion},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/dasilva2017THlso/dasilva2017THlso.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/dasilva2017THlso/dasilva2017THlso_pres.pdf},
	author = {Curt Da Silva}
}
@mastersthesis {wason2017THsss,
	title = {Simultaneous-source seismic data acquisition and processing with compressive sensing},
	year = {2017},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {08},
	school = {The University of British Columbia},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Vancouver},
	abstract = {The work in this thesis adapts ideas from the field of compressive sensing (CS) that lead to new insights into acquiring and processing seismic data, where we can fundamentally rethink how we design seismic acquisition surveys and process acquired data to minimize acquisition- and processing-related costs. Current efforts towards dense source/receiver sampling and full azimuthal coverage to produce high-resolution images of the subsurface have led to the deployment of multiple sources across survey areas. A step ahead from multisource acquisition is simultaneous-source acquisition, where multiple sources fire shots at near-simultaneous/random times resulting in overlapping shot records, in comparison to no overlaps during conventional sequential-source acquisition. Adoption of simultaneous-source techniques has helped to improve survey efficiency and data density. The engine that drives simultaneous-source technology is simultaneous-source separation {\textendash}- a methodology that aims to recover conventional sequential-source data from simultaneous-source data. This is essential because many seismic processing techniques rely on dense and periodic (or regular) source/receiver sampling. We address the challenge of source separation through a combination of tailored simultaneous-source acquisition design and sparsity-promoting recovery via convex optimization using l1 objectives. We use CS metrics to investigate the relationship between marine simultaneous-source acquisition design and data reconstruction fidelity, and consequently assert the importance of randomness in the acquisition system in combination with an appropriate choice for a sparsifying transform (i.e., curvelet transform) in the reconstruction algorithm. We also address the challenge of minimizing the cost of expensive, dense, periodically-sampled and replicated time-lapse surveying and data processing by adapting ideas from distributed compressive sensing. We show that compressive randomized time-lapse surveys need not be replicated to attain acceptable levels of data repeatability, as long as we know the shot positions (post acquisition) to a sufficient degree of accuracy. We conclude by comparing sparsity-promoting and rank-minimization recovery techniques for marine simultaneous-source separation, and demonstrate that recoveries are comparable; however, the latter approach readily scales to large-scale seismic data and is computationally faster.},
	keywords = {Acquisition, Compressive Sensing, marine, Optimization, PhD, simultaneous source, source separation},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/wason2017THsss/wason2017THsss.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2017/wason2017THsss/wason2017THsss_pres.pdf},
	author = {Haneet Wason}
}
@mastersthesis {lin2015THpes,
	title = {Primary estimation with sparsity-promoting bi-convex optimization},
	year = {2015},
	note = {(PhD)},
	month = {10},
	school = {The University of British Columbia},
	type = {phd},
	address = {Vancouver},
	abstract = {This thesis establishes a novel inversion methodology for the surface-related primaries from a given recorded seismic wavefield, called the Robust Estimation of Primaries by Sparse Inversion (Robust EPSI, or REPSI). Surface-related multiples are a major source of coherent noise in seismic data, and inferring fine geological structures from active-source seismic recordings typically first necessitates its removal or mitigation. For this task, current practice calls for data-driven approaches which produce only approximate multiple models that must be non-linearly subtracted from the data, often distorting weak primary events in the process. A recently proposed method called Estimation of Primaries by Sparse Inversion (EPSI) avoids this adaptive subtraction by directly inverting for a discrete representation of the underlying multiple-free subsurface impulse response as a set of band-limited spikes. However, in its original form, the EPSI algorithm exhibits a few notable shortcomings that impede adoption. Although it was shown that the correct impulse response can be obtained through a sparsest solution criteria, the current EPSI algorithm is not designed to take advantage of this finding, but instead approximates a sparse solution in an ad-hoc manner that requires practitioners to decide on a multitude of inversion parameters. The Robust EPSI method introduced in this thesis reformulates the original EPSI problem as a formal bi-convex optimization problem that makes obtaining the sparsest solution an explicit goal, while also reliably admit satisfactory solutions using contemporary self-tuning gradient methods commonly seen in large-scale machine learning communities. I show that the Robust EPSI algorithm is able to operate successfully on a variety of datasets with minimal user input, while also producing a more accurate model of the subsurface impulse response when compared to the original algorithm. Furthermore, this thesis makes several contributions that improves the capability and practicality of EPSI: a novel scattering-based multiple prediction model that allows Robust EPSI to deal with wider near-offset receiver gaps than previously demonstrated for EPSI, as well as a multigrid-inspired continuation strategy that significantly reduces the computation time needed to solve EPSI-type problems. These additions are enabled by and built upon the formalism of the Robust EPSI as developed in this thesis.},
	keywords = {biconvex, EPSI, inversion, multiples, Optimization, PhD, sparsity},
	url = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2015/lin2015THpes/lin2015THpes.pdf},
	presentation = {https://slim.gatech.edu/Publications/Public/Thesis/2015/lin2015THpes/lin2015THpes_pres.pdf},
	author = {Tim T.Y. Lin}
}
