WISE: Full-waveform Inference with Subsurface Extensions

Quantifying uncertainty in full-waveform inversion is complex given the large sizes of both the model and data. A previous approach employed a variational inference framework, leveraging reverse-time migration to summarize observed data and approximate the posterior distribution through conditional normalizing flows. While reverse-time migration effectively summarizes the data when the background model is close to the true one, its accuracy diminishes with a less accurate background model. In our study, we suggest utilizing subsurface offset gathers as the summary statistics for the variational inference of full-waveform inversion. These gathers retain all the information in seismic data, even when the background model is cycle-skipped or fails to flatten the gathers. Through a case study on Compass model, we confirm our framework's effectiveness and show that subsurface offset gathers offer a better summary statistic than just reverse-time migration.