Bayesian full waveform inversion with sequential surrogate model refinement

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Meles, Giovanni Angelo, Marelli, Stefano, Linde, Niklas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866908351609176064
author Meles, Giovanni Angelo
Marelli, Stefano
Linde, Niklas
author_facet Meles, Giovanni Angelo
Marelli, Stefano
Linde, Niklas
contents Bayesian formulations of inverse problems are attractive for their ability to incorporate prior knowledge and update probabilistic models as new data become available. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods sample posterior probability density functions (pdfs) but require accurate prior models and many likelihood evaluations. Dimensionality-reduction methods, such as principal component analysis (PCA), can help define the prior and train surrogate models that efficiently approximate costly forward solvers. However, for problems like full waveform inversion, the complex input/output relations often cannot be captured well by surrogate models trained only on prior samples, leading to biased results. Including samples from high-posterior-probability regions can improve accuracy, but these regions are hard to identify in advance. We propose an iterative method that progressively refines the surrogate model. Starting with low-frequency data, we train an initial surrogate and perform an MCMC inversion. The resulting posterior samples are then used to retrain the surrogate, allowing us to expand the frequency bandwidth in the next inversion step. Repeating this process reduces model errors and improves the surrogate's accuracy over the relevant input domain. Ultimately, we obtain a highly accurate surrogate across the full bandwidth, enabling a final MCMC inversion. Numerical results from 2D synthetic crosshole Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) examples show that our method outperforms ray-based approaches and those relying solely on prior sampling. The overall computational cost is reduced by about two orders of magnitude compared to full finite-difference time-domain modeling.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_03246
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian full waveform inversion with sequential surrogate model refinement
Meles, Giovanni Angelo
Marelli, Stefano
Linde, Niklas
Geophysics
Machine Learning
Bayesian formulations of inverse problems are attractive for their ability to incorporate prior knowledge and update probabilistic models as new data become available. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods sample posterior probability density functions (pdfs) but require accurate prior models and many likelihood evaluations. Dimensionality-reduction methods, such as principal component analysis (PCA), can help define the prior and train surrogate models that efficiently approximate costly forward solvers. However, for problems like full waveform inversion, the complex input/output relations often cannot be captured well by surrogate models trained only on prior samples, leading to biased results. Including samples from high-posterior-probability regions can improve accuracy, but these regions are hard to identify in advance. We propose an iterative method that progressively refines the surrogate model. Starting with low-frequency data, we train an initial surrogate and perform an MCMC inversion. The resulting posterior samples are then used to retrain the surrogate, allowing us to expand the frequency bandwidth in the next inversion step. Repeating this process reduces model errors and improves the surrogate's accuracy over the relevant input domain. Ultimately, we obtain a highly accurate surrogate across the full bandwidth, enabling a final MCMC inversion. Numerical results from 2D synthetic crosshole Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) examples show that our method outperforms ray-based approaches and those relying solely on prior sampling. The overall computational cost is reduced by about two orders of magnitude compared to full finite-difference time-domain modeling.
title Bayesian full waveform inversion with sequential surrogate model refinement
topic Geophysics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03246