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We consider the inverse problem of quantitative reconstruction of properties (e.g., bulk modulus, density) of visco-acoustic materials based on measurements of responding waves after stimulation of the medium. Numerical reconstruction is performed by an iterative minimization algorithm. Firstly, we investigate the robustness of the algorithm with respect to attenuation model uncertainty, that is, when different attenuation models are used to simulate synthetic observation data and for the inversion, respectively. Secondly, to handle data-sets with multiple reflections generated by wall boundaries around the domain, we perform inversion using complex frequencies, and show that it offers a robust framework that alleviates the difficulties of multiple reflections. To illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm, we perform numerical simulations of ultrasound imaging experiments to reconstruct a synthetic breast sample that contains an inclusion of high-contrast properties. We perform experiments in two and three dimensions, where the latter also serves to demonstrate the numerical feasibility in a large-scale configuration., Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures

International audience

International audience; In this work, we provide an algorithm to compute efficiently and accurately the full outgoing modal Green's kernel for the scalar wave equation in local helioseismology under spherical symmetry. Due to the high computational cost of a full Green's function, current helioseismic studies rely on single-source computations. However, a more realistic modelization of the helioseismic products (cross-covariance and power spectrum) requires the full Green's kernel. In the classical approach, the Dirac source is discretized and one simulation gives the Green's function on a line. Here, we propose a two-step algorithm which, with two simulations, provides the full kernel on the domain. Moreover, our method is more accurate, as the singularity of the solution due to the Dirac source is described exactly. In addition, it is coupled with the exact Dirichlet-to-Neumann boundary condition, providing optimal accuracy in approximating the outgoing Green's kernel, which we demonstrate in our experiments. In addition, we show that high-frequency approximations of the nonlocal radiation boundary conditions can represent accurately the helioseismic products.

We construct C2 representations of the background quantities that characterize the interior of the Sun and its atmosphere starting from the data-points of the standard solar model S. This model is further extended considering an isothermal atmosphere, that we refer to as model AtmoI. It is not trivial to build the C2 representations of the parameters from a discrete set of values, in particular in the transition region between the end of model S and the atmosphere. This technical work is needed as a crucial building block to study theoretically and numerically the propagation of waves in the Sun, using the equations of solar oscillations (also referred to as Galbrun's equation in aeroacoustics). The constructed models are available at http://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1097638., 17 pages

SUMMARY We study the seismic inverse problem for the recovery of subsurface properties in acoustic media. In order to reduce the ill-posedness of the problem, the heterogeneous wave speed parameter is represented using a limited number of coefficients associated with a basis of eigenvectors of a diffusion equation, following the regularization by discretization approach. We compare several choices for the diffusion coefficient in the partial differential equations, which are extracted from the field of image processing. We first investigate their efficiency for image decomposition (accuracy of the representation with respect to the number of variables). Next, we implement the method in the quantitative reconstruction procedure for seismic imaging, following the full waveform inversion method, where the difficulty resides in that the basis is defined from an initial model where none of the actual structures is known. In particular, we demonstrate that the method may be relevant for the reconstruction of media with salt-domes. We use the method in 2-D and 3-D experiments, and show that the eigenvector representation compensates for the lack of low-frequency information, it eventually serves us to extract guidelines for the implementation of the method.

In this paper, we perform non-linear minimization using the Hybridizable Discontinuous Galerkin method (HDG) for the discretization of the forward problem, and implement the adjoint-state method for the computation of the functional derivatives. Compared to continuous and discontinuous Galerkin discretizations, HDG reduces the computational cost by working with the numerical traces, hence removing the degrees of freedom that are inside the cells. It is particularly attractive for large-scale time-harmonic quantitative inverse problems which make repeated use of the forward discretization as they rely on an iterative minimization procedure. HDG is based upon two levels of linear problems: a global system to find the numerical traces, followed by local systems to construct the volume solution. This technicality requires a careful derivation of the adjoint-state method, that we address in this paper. We work with the acoustic wave equations in the frequency domain and illustrate with a three-dimensional experiment using partial reflection-data, where we further employ the features of DG-like methods to efficiently handle the topography with p-adaptivity., 24 pages, 8 figures

The determination of background velocity by full-waveform inversion (FWI) is known to be hampered by the local minima of the data misfit caused by the phase shifts associated with background perturbations. Attraction basins for the underlying optimization problems can be computed around any nominal velocity model, and they guarantee that the misfit functional has only one (global) minimum. The attraction basins are further associated with tolerable error levels representing the maximal allowed distance between the (observed) data and the simulations (i.e., the acceptable noise level). The estimates are defined a priori, and they only require the computation of (possibly many) the first- and second-order directional derivatives of the (model to synthetic) forward map. The geometry of the search direction and the frequency influence the size of the attraction basins, and the complex frequency can be used to enlarge the basins. The size of the attraction basins for the perturbation of background velocities in classic FWI (global model parameterization) and the data-space reflectivity reformulation (migration-based traveltime [MBTT]) are compared: The MBTT reformulation substantially increases the size of the attraction basins (by a factor of 4–15). Practically, this reformulation compensates for the lack of low-frequency data. Our analysis provides guidelines for a successful implementation of the MBTT reformulation.

International audience; In this paper, we study the time-harmonic scalar equation describing the propagation of acoustic waves in the Sun's atmosphere under ideal atmospheric assumptions. We use the Liouville change of unknown to conjugate the original problem to a Schrödinger equation with a Coulomb-type potential. This transformation makes appear a new wavenumber, k, and the link with the Whittaker's equation. We consider two different problems: in the first one, with the ideal atmospheric assumptions extended to the whole space, we construct explicitly the Schwartz kernel of the resolvent, starting from a solution given by Hostler and Pratt in punctured domains, and use this to construct outgoing solutions and radiation conditions. In the second problem, we construct exact Dirichlet-to-Neumann map using Whittaker functions, and new radiation boundary conditions (RBC), using gauge functions in terms of k. The new approach gives rise to simpler RBC for the same precision compared to existing ones. The robustness of our new RBC is corroborated by numerical experiments.

Quantitative imaging of sub-surface Earth's properties in elastic media is performed from Distributed Acoustic Sensing data. A new misfit functional based upon the reciprocity-gap is designed, taking cross-correlations of displacement and strain, and these products further associate an observation with a simulation. In comparison with other misfit functionals, this one has the advantage to only require little a-priori information on the exciting sources. In particular, the misfit criterion enables the use of data from regional earthquakes (teleseismic events can be included as well), followed by exploration data to perform a multi-resolution reconstruction. The data from regional earthquakes contain the low-frequency content which is missing in the exploration ones, allowing for the recovery of the long spatial wavelength, even with very few sources. These data are used to build prior models for the subsequent reconstruction from the higher-frequency exploration data. This gives the elastic Full Reciprocity-gap Waveform Inversion method, and we demonstrate its performance with a pilot experiment for elastic isotropic reconstruction., Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures

International audience; The quantitative reconstruction of subsurface earth properties from the propagation of waves follows an iterative minimization of a misfit functional. In marine seismic exploration, the observed data usually consist of measurements of the pressure field, but dual-sensor devices also provide the normal velocity. Consequently, a reciprocity-based misfit functional is specifically designed, and it defines the full reciprocity-gap waveform inversion (FRgWI) method. This misfit functional provides additional features compared to the more traditional least-squares approaches, in particular, in that the observational and computational acquisitions can be different. Therefore, the positions and wavelets of the sources from which the measurements are acquired are not needed in the reconstruction procedure and, in fact, the numerical acquisition (for the simulations) can be chosen arbitrarily. Based on 3D experiments, FRgWI is shown to behave better than full-waveform inversion in the same context. It allows for arbitrary numerical acquisitions in two ways: when few measurements are given, a dense numerical acquisition (compared to the observational one) can be used to compensate. However, with a dense observational acquisition, a sparse computational one is shown to be sufficient, for instance, with multiple-point sources, hence reducing the numerical cost. FRgWI displays accurate reconstructions in both situations and appears more robust with respect to crosstalk than least-squares shot stacking.

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The abstract is available here: https://uscholar.univie.ac.at/o:1604264