3-DIMENSIONAL INVERSE SCATTERING VERSUS IMAGING METHODS

An efficient iterative method is discussed for solving the 3-D nonline ar seismic inverse problem. The method is based on high-frequency asym ptotic methods for both computing the data misfit function and acceler ating the rate of convergence by means of preconditioning. The method is applied to synthetic and real data and, for the simple models consi dered here, it is concluded that it appears to be capable of resolving both background velocity and contrast parameters. For a typical three -dimensional data-acquisition geometry, the method seems to be :ess se nsitive to sparse-sampling effects than imaging methods.