Time-domain Wavefield Reconstruction Inversion for large-scale seismic inversion

Data fitting based on a wave equation model has driven the modern development in seismic imaging, and it is now relevant for large scale inversion. A wider adoption is currently being limited by available computational resources and the classical limitations of non-linear optimization, which often produces suboptimal local minima. A class of methods based on the inexact solution of the wave equation, known as wavefield reconstruction inversion, have shown remarkable robustness towards local minima, however the solvers required for the inexact wave equation scale badly to 3D problems. We propose a reformulation of wavefield reconstruction inversion which involves the solution of the classical time-domain wave equation, and it is practical for large-scale problems. Applications to tilted-transverse isotropy synthetic datasets clearly demonstrate the advantage over traditional full-waveform inversion.