Highly Accurate Inversion Methods for Three-Dimensional Stratified Media

This paper describes two highly accurate velocity inversion methods for three-dimensional isovelocity stratified media. The first one is a Born-type perturbation method based on an asymptotic, implicit Green’s function, while the second one is based on the Kirchhoff representatfnn of the reflected field. It is shown that, given a band-limited reflected signal resulting from one backscatter experiment, both methods can be used in a recursive manner to accurately reconstruct the unknown velocity profile. They are tested on both synthetic and real data sets. The tests on synthetic data demonstrate higher accuracy than has been the case for previous methods in the literature. In the most extreme test, synthetics with 10 layers and velocity variation on the order of 200% were used and extremely accurate inversion was achieved.