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This research introduces a novel framework that integrates diffusion models into full-waveform inversion by using physical state constraints to guide the denoising process, effectively addressing the ill-posed nature of seismic velocity reconstruction. By separating wave-equation and denoiser gradients, the method maintains optimization history while improving structural recovery under noisy or incomplete data conditions without requiring retraining on new datasets. The approach demonstrates significant performance gains over classical and standard diffusion-based baselines in complex geological scenarios.
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Physical-State-Guided Diffusion Sampling for Full-Waveform Inversion

arXiv2 min read

arXiv:2609.12899v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Full waveform inversion (FWI) estimates subsurface velocity from seismic recordings, but its ill-posedness and nonlinearity make accurate reconstruction strongly dependent on initialization and prior information. Diffusion posterior sampling provides a learned geological prior, yet directly coupling its denoiser to the nonlinear wave solver can yield unreliable physical guidance. We propose Physical-State-Guided Diffusion Sampling (PSG), which couples a persistent physical velocity to the diffusion prior through a Gaussian bridge. The physical state is refined by waveform fitting regularized by the denoised velocity, and in turn guides the reverse diffusion process. This formulation separates the wave-equation and denoiser gradients while preserving conventional FWI initialization and accumulated optimization history. On four OpenFWI families, PSG's terminal denoised estimates outperform classical and diffusion-based baselines under clean and missing-trace acquisitions and maintain strong structural recovery under measurement noise. Repeated stochastic runs preserve the dominant geological structures, with ensemble variability concentrated near geological interfaces and positively associated with local inversion error. A frozen OpenFWI-trained prior further supports inversion of the larger Marmousi, Overthrust, and BP2004 Salt models, recovering complex geological structures without retraining.

Abstract:Full waveform inversion (FWI) estimates subsurface velocity from seismic recordings, but its ill-posedness and nonlinearity make accurate reconstruction strongly dependent on initialization and prior information. Diffusion posterior sampling provides a learned geological prior, yet directly coupling its denoiser to the nonlinear wave solver can yield unreliable physical guidance. We propose Physical-State-Guided Diffusion Sampling (PSG), which couples a persistent physical velocity to the diffusion prior through a Gaussian bridge. The physical state is refined by waveform fitting regularized by the denoised velocity, and in turn guides the reverse diffusion process. This formulation separates the wave-equation and denoiser gradients while preserving conventional FWI initialization and accumulated optimization history. On four OpenFWI families, PSG's terminal denoised estimates outperform classical and diffusion-based baselines under clean and missing-trace acquisitions and maintain strong structural recovery under measurement noise. Repeated stochastic runs preserve the dominant geological structures, with ensemble variability concentrated near geological interfaces and positively associated with local inversion error. A frozen OpenFWI-trained prior further supports inversion of the larger Marmousi, Overthrust, and BP2004 Salt models, recovering complex geological structures without retraining.

Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2609.12899 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2609.12899v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.12899 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 270 words

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