Some 3D applications of full waveform inversion

Since 25 years, several synthetic and real examples of Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) have been published. The main advantages and limitations of this approach have been explained in the 80’s. It was soon realized that FWI requires long offsets and low frequencies to update the velocity background. Thanks to the improvements in acquisition over the last 20 years, long offset data became available and several research groups could demonstrate the relevance of FWI with 2D data sets. Over the last 5 years,<br>the increase in computer power made 3D FWI affordable at least with low frequency data. In this presentation, we will discuss a few applications of FWI with marine data sets in the context of velocity model building and time laspe when we invert only the low frequencies. We will also illustrate the relevance of an anisotropic FWI to correctly handle short and long offsets.