Seismic Acoustic Impedance Inversion Framework Based on Conditional Latent Generative Diffusion Model

Abstract:Seismic acoustic impedance plays a crucial role in lithological identification and subsurface structure interpretation. However, due to the inherently ill-posed nature of the inversion problem, directly estimating impedance from post-stack seismic data remains highly challenging. Recently, diffusion models have shown great potential in addressing such inverse problems due to their strong prior learning and generative capabilities. Nevertheless, most existing methods operate in the pixel domain and require multiple iterations, limiting their applicability to field data. To alleviate these limitations, we propose a novel seismic acoustic impedance inversion framework based on a conditional latent generative diffusion model, where the inversion process is made in latent space. To avoid introducing additional training overhead when embedding conditional inputs, we design a lightweight wavelet-based module into the framework to project seismic data and reuse an encoder trained on impedance to embed low-frequency impedance into the latent space. Furthermore, we propose a model-driven sampling strategy during the inversion process of this framework to enhance accuracy and reduce the number of required diffusion steps. Numerical experiments on a synthetic model demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high inversion accuracy and strong generalization capability within only a few diffusion steps. Moreover, application to field data reveals enhanced geological detail and higher consistency with well-log measurements, validating the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed approach.

Revised after peer review. Published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2506.13529 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2506.13529v2 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.13529 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 64, 2026, Art. no. 5915213

https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2026.3717153 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources

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