Regularizing waveform inversion by projection onto intersections of convex sets

A framework is proposed for regularizing the waveform inversion problem by projections onto intersections of convex sets. Multiple pieces of prior information about the geology are represented by multiple convex sets, for example limits on the velocity or minimum smoothness conditions on the model. The data-misfit is then minimized, such that the estimated model is always in the intersection of the convex sets. Therefore, it is clear what properties the estimated model will have at each iteration. This approach does not require any quadratic penalties to be used and thus avoids the known problems and limitations of those types of penalties. It is shown that by formulating waveform inversion as a constrained problem, regularization ideas such as Tikhonov regularization and gradient filtering can be incorporated into one framework. The algorithm is generally applicable, in the sense that it works with any (differentiable) objective function, several gradient and quasi-Newton based solvers and does not require significant additional computation. The method is demonstrated on the inversion of very noisy synthetic data and vertical seismic profiling field data.