Fast Seismic Inversion Methods Using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

This letter presents ACO
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, a new computationally efficient ant-colony-optimization-based algorithm, tailored for continuous-domain problems. The ACO
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algorithm is well suited for application in seismic inversion problems, owing to its intrinsic features, such as heuristics in generating the initial solution population and its facility to deal with multiobjective optimization problems. Here, we show how the ACO
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algorithm can be applied in two methodologies to obtain 3-D impedance maps from poststack seismic amplitude data. The first methodology pertains to the traditional method of forward convolution of a reflectivity model with the estimated wavelet, where ACO
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is used to guess the appropriate wavelet as the reflectivity model. In the second methodology, we propose an even faster inversion algorithm based on inverse filter optimization, where ACO
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optimizes the inverse filter that is deconvolved with the seismic traces and results in a reflectivity model similar to that found in well logs. This modeled inverse filter is then deconvolved with the entire 3-D seismic volume. In experiments, both the methodologies are applied to a synthetic 3-D seismic volume. The results validate their feasibility and the suitability of ACO
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as an optimization algorithm. The results also show that the second methodology has the advantages of a much higher convergence speed and effectiveness as a seismic inversion tool.