NSERC 2010 DNOISE application

DNOISE II: Dynamic Nonlinear Optimization for Imaging in Seismic Exploration is a multidisciplinary research project that involves faculty from the Mathematics, Computer Science, and Earth and Ocean Sciences Departments at the University of British Columbia. DNOISE II constitutes a transformative research program towards a new paradigm in seismic exploration where the acquisition- and processing-related costs are no longer determined by the survey area and discretization but by transform-domain sparsity of the final result. In this approach, we rid ourselves from the confinements of conventional overly stringent sampling criteria that call for regular sampling with sequentiual sources at Nyquist rates. By adapting the principles of compressive sensing, DNOISE II promotes a ground-up formulation for seismic imaging where adverse subsampling-related artifacts are removed by intelligent simultaneous-acquisition design and recovery by transform-domain sparsity promotion. This development–-in conjunction with our track records in sparse recovery and time-harmonic Helmholtz solvers–-puts us in an unique position to deliver on fundamental breakthroughs in the development and implementation of the next-generation of processing, imaging, and full-waveform inversion solutions.