Harnessing the complete load of information encrypted in seismic traces for the ultimate earth imaging and rock characterisations outcomes. While most of the other seismic methods use only a fraction of the recorded wavefield to derive some sort of information about the earth, FWI methods use the entire wavefield in order to increase the efficiency of data inversion. They often result in more accurate and more detailed underground rock property profiles.

We usually start with a simple (low-resolution) rock velocity profile and let the inversion program update it with more details. The FWI inversion algorithm updates the initial model at each iteration based on the mismatch between the simulated wavefield and the data recorded in the field. To simulate field recordings an identical survey is created on the computer. At each iteration, the difference between the simulated wavefield (synthetics) and the field recordings is computed and translated to model property updates. This process is repeated until the mismatch between the two datasets is minimum.