Pre-Stack Inversion Guide 1

Guide to Pre-Stack Inversion

Introduction

Geoview is the program from Hampson-Russell which you can use to perform post-stack or pre-
stack inversion of seismic data. For pre-stack inversion, you will need:

• One or more well logs.

• A pre-stack seismic volume, either 2D or 3D. This is usually in the form of fully processed
CDP gathers or angle gathers.
• A set of horizons to guide the interpolation of the initial guess model.

The output data, for the pre-stack case, are three volumes: acoustic impedance, shear impedance
and density.

This tutorial takes you through the process of inverting a set of CDP gathers from western Canada
which exhibit an AVO anomaly.
The typical workflow for pre-stack inversion consists of the following steps:

(1) Start Geoview.

(2) Load wells into Geoview .
(3) Load seismic data into Geoview.
(4) Load horizons (if available) or pick horizons.
(5) Correlate each well with the seismic volume to optimize the depth-to-time conversion. At
the same time, extract one or more wavelets.
(6) Build an initial model for inversion.
(7) Run inversion analysis to determine inversion parameters.
(8) Run inversion over the volume and analyze the results.

In this tutorial, we will go through each of these steps.

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Starting Geoview

Geoview is the name of the Hampson-Russell program which contains all available options,
including pre-stack inversion.

To start this tutorial, first start the Geoview program. On a Linux/Unix workstation, do this by
going to a command window and typing:

geoview

On a PC, start Geoview by clicking the Start button and selecting the Geoview option on the
Programs > HRS applications menu, or by clicking the Geoview icon on your desktop if one
has been set up.

When you launch Geoview, the first window that you see contains a list of any projects
previously opened in Geoview . For example, the figure below shows a single previous
project, which you can open. Your list will be blank if this is the first time you have ever run
Geoview.

For this tutorial, we will start a new project. Before doing that, you can set all the data paths to
point to the location where you have stored the tutorial data. To do that, click the Settings tab:

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Now you can see a series of default locations for the Data Directory, Project Directory, and
Database Directory. We would like to change all of these to point to the directory where the
tutorial data is stored.

To change all of the directories to the same location, click on the option Set all default
directories and then click the button to the right:

Then, in the File Selection Dialog, select the folder which contains the tutorial data:

After setting all three paths, the Geoview window will now show the selected directories (note
that yours may be different from what we show below):

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When you have finished setting all the paths, click Apply to store these paths:

Now click the Projects tab and choose the option to Create New Project:

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A dialog appears to set the project name. We will call it Pre-stack inversion guide, as shown
below. Enter the project name and click OK on that dialog:

Now a dialog appears, asking you the name of the database to use for this project:

The database is used to store all the wells used in this project. By default, Geoview creates a new
database, with the same name as the project and located in the same directory. For example, this
project is called Pre-stack inversion guide.prj, so the default database would be called Pre-stack

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inversion guide.wdb. That would be desirable if we were starting a new project, intending to read
in well logs from external files.

For this tutorial, to save time, we have already created a database, which has the well already
loaded. To use that database, click Specify database. You will see a pop-up menu appear below
this button. Choose Open:

Then, select the database prestack_inversion_database, as shown, and click OK:

The previous dialog shows the selected database and the new project name. Click OK to accept
this:

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The Geoview Window now looks like this:

Displaying the wells

The left part of the Geoview window (called the Project Manager) shows all the project data so
far. The tabs along the left side select the type of project data. Right now, the Well tab is selected
and we can see the single well from the external data base. Click the “►” sign near that well to see
a list of curves in that well:

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To see more details about the wells, click the Data Explorer tab to the right:

The Geoview window now changes as shown:

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Click the arrow next to the well name to get more information about the curves in that well:

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Finally, to see the most complete view of the log curves within a well, find the icon for that well
within the Project Data window and double-click:

This creates a new tab within the Geoview window, called the Wells tab, which displays the
selected well curves:

We can see that this well contains three log curves which are used in pre-stack inversion: the P-
wave velocity log, the density log, and the S-wave velocity log. The S-wave velocity log for this
well was actually created from the existing P-wave and density logs, using mathematical
transforms. In addition, the depth-time curve for this well has been modified using the process of
log correlation. For details on those processes, including loading logs into the Geoview database,
see the tutorial AVO Modeling Guide.

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Loading the Seismic Data

We have now loaded the well which will be used in the Pre-stack Inversion process. The next step
is to load the seismic volume.

On the far left side of the Geoview window, click the Seismic tab:

The window to the right of this tab shows all seismic data loaded so far. This is empty. Go to the
bottom of the window (on the left of the workspace) and click the Import Seismic button:

On the pull-down menu, select From SEG-Y File:

On the dialog that appears, select the file super_gather.sgy:

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Click Next at the base of the dialog:

Set the Geometry Type to 3D (this is the default) and click Next:

On the third page, we tell the program what information it can use from the trace headers. In fact,
in this data set, there are no Inline and Xline numbers or X and Y coordinates.

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After modifying that item, as shown, click Next to see the SEG-Y Format page:

By default, this page assumes that the seismic data is a SEG-Y file with all header values filled in
as per the standard SEG-Y convention. For example, it expects to find the Inline and Xline
numbers at the byte locations shown above. If you are not sure that is true, click Header Editor to
see what is in the trace headers.

In our case, we believe the format information is correct, so click Next to move to the next page.
Now the following warning message appears because the program is about to scan the entire
SEG-Y file:

Click Yes to begin the scanning process. When the scanning has finished, the Geometry Grid page
appears:

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Because we have not read X-Y information from the headers, the program assumes this is a single
straight line, which is correct. Click OK. After building the geometry files, a new window appears,
showing how the well is mapped into this seismic volume:

In this case, the mapping is not correct because we did not supply the X-Y location of the well, and
there were no X-Y coordinates in the seismic trace headers. We can manually locate the well at the
know CDP location (330). Type that number in the location shown:

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Then, click OK to accept the new locations shown on this window. Now the seismic data appears
within the Geoview window:

Modifying the Seismic Display

The workspace currently shows the single Inline from this dataset. To see other parts of the line,
slide the scroll bar at the base of the display

To see the display positioned at the well location, go to the Well icon and click the down arrow as
show below:

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The drop-down menu shows the one well in the project. Select the well and the Geoview window
shows the seismic data in the vicinity of that well location:

Importing Horizons

The last data component required for building the initial inversion model is a set of horizon picks.
You can use Geoview to pick the data directly. Alternatively, you can import horizons which have
been previously picked in other software. Geoview can read in picks in Landmark, GeoQuest, or
General ASCII format.

To start that process, select Horizon > Import Horizons > From File:

From the File Selection Window, highlight the file called super_gather_horizons.txt and click
Select:

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Note that, at the lower left corner of the dialog, we are specifying this to be a Free Format file.
Click Next:

The next page of the dialog allows you to specify how the file is organized:

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Click the View Files button to see the ASCII file:

The file display shows that there are 3 horizons in the file, and that we need to skip the first
information line.

Fill in the format dialog as shown below:

Select the geometry reference as shown below:

When you have modified the dialog as shown above, click OK and the imported horizons will be
displayed on the seismic window:
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Using the pre-stack inversion workflow

Now that we have read in all the data necessary for the inversion, we are ready to start the process.

First, look at the horizontal tabs to the left of the seismic window. You will see that one of those
tabs is called Processes. Click that tab to see a list of all the operations which are available in
Geoview. Each of the processes can be expanded. For example, if you click on the Inversion
option, the following expanded list is seen:

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As we can see, the list includes Log Processing options, Seismic Processing options, AVO
Modeling and Analysis tools, Inversion options, etc. One way to do the inversion would be to
apply each of the desired options in turn. This would be the standard approach.

We will use an alternate procedure in this tutorial. We will use the pre-defined Workflows. Click
the Workflows tab. The window changes like this:

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Each of the items on this window contains a complete workflow for the specified process. Click the
item called Pre Stack Inversion. The window changes like this:

We now see the suggested series of steps to be followed for Pre-Stack Inversion. The steps are
colored red to indicate that the parameters have not yet been supplied. These are the “default”
steps, but the list can be edited and customized.

Selecting the input seismic

Double-click the first item Select Pre-stack Seismic. An arrow will appear in front of the item,
as shown here:

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Now a dialog appears on the right with a list of all seismic volumes in the project:

Since we have only loaded one seismic volume, that volume is selected. Note that at the lower right
corner of the dialog, there is a button for importing more seismic volumes:

In fact, we want to use the selected seismic volume, which is highlighted, so click Select on this
dialog.

Setting up the Velocity Model

Now double-click the second item of the workflow, Set up Velocity model:

The purpose of this step is to define a velocity model, which will be used to transform the offset-
dependent super gather into an angle gather.

The dialog which appears specifies the velocity field used to do that transformation:

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We have three choices for specifying this velocity field – as a table of control points, using a single
log or providing a volume in SEG-Y format:

For large volumes, the first choice is most appropriate, typically importing that table using the
Import button at the base of the dialog. For a small volume like this one, we will use the P-wave
Curve which ties the volume. Select P-wave Curve and the display changes to show the velocities
calculated from the correlated sonic log within the AVO_WELL.

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Note that, by default, a 500m smoother has been applied. Turn OFF the smoothing by removing the
check mark:

Now the original unsmoothed sonic log appears. It is usually very appropriate to smooth the
velocities used for the angle gather calculation. However, the default 500 m smoother is rather long
for this short well. Set the Vertical Smoother back ON, but set the smoothing at 200 m. The
velocity field now looks like this:

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Finally, click Save to store this velocity field.

To see the effect of this velocity model, we will display the incidence angles. To do that, go to the
window containing the seismic display and right-click as shown below:

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The resulting color display shows usable angles at the zone of interest out to about 30 degrees:

Performing the Angle Gather

Double-click the next item on the workflow, which is Angle Gather:

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The Angle Gather process transforms the input CDP gathers from the offset domain to the incident
angle domain, using the defined velocity field. The dialog shows that, by default, we will create 15
angle traces ranging from 0° to 45°:

Actually, we know from the previous display that the largest incident angle at the zone of interest is
about 30°, so change the menu as shown below:

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After you have changed the maximum angle parameter, click Run. When the process has
completed, the Geoview window now shows the original super gather and the new angle gathers in
a split window:

Selecting the wells

The next step is to select the wells which will be used in the model building. Double-click that item
on the workflow:

Now we see a list of the wells which have already been loaded into the project:

The buttons at the bottom of the dialog allow us to import more wells, if necessary. Also, note that
individual wells can be chosen by clicking the box to the left of the well name. In this case, we
want to use the single well in the project, so click on Select to complete this step.
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Selecting the horizons

Now double-click the next item of the workflow, Select Horizons:

The dialog on the right shows the three horizons we have just loaded:

It also contains buttons for picking or importing new horizons:

We use horizons to interpolate between the wells when building the initial model for inversion. For
this reason, we do not always want to use all the horizons that are available. For example, we may
want to exclude horizons that are incomplete or noisy. For this tutorial, we will use all of the
imported horizons, which are already selected.

Click Select to accept the three horizons.

Extracting the wavelets

The next step is to apply the process Extract Statistical Wavelet, by double-clicking that option.

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There are two methods for extracting the wavelets. One method uses the wells, and can give a good
estimate of both amplitude and phase spectra of the wavelet. However, that method cannot be used
until the well is correlated, i.e., until the proper depth-time relationship has been determined.

The second method, called “statistical”, uses the seismic data alone to extract the wavelet. This
method will estimate the amplitude spectrum from the seismic data, but we must make an
assumption about the phase: typically we assume the data are zero-phase. In this step, we are
extracting a set of statistical wavelets.

The dialog on the right sets the range of data to analyze:

By default, the program will examine the entire data volume, but this is rarely appropriate. In
particular, we want to set a time window around the zone of interest. Change the dialog to extract
using the limited time window shown below:

Another parameter we would like to change is the number of wavelets.

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Generally, for pre-stack data, we expect a continuous loss of high frequency energy as we move
from near to far offset. That means that we expect a different wavelet for each trace of the CDP
gather. Theoretically, we could extract a different wavelet for each offset or angle, but practically
we have found it sufficient to extract a new wavelet for about every 15° of incidence angle. Since
the current angle gather ranges from 0° to 30°, we choose to extract two wavelets. After changing
the menu as shown above, click Run to extract the wavelets.

The following display appears, showing the two wavelets extracted:

In this display, the near angle wavelet is in blue and the far angle wavelet in green. The two
wavelets look very similar, but the amplitude spectra show a slight loss of high frequencies on the
far wavelet spectrum as expected.

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The wavelet display is currently “floating”. We can dock it into the Wavelets tab by clicking the
“airplane” icon on the bottom right of the display:

The produced wavelet group lists in the Project Data, as shown below:

Correlating the Wells

The next step in the workflow is to Correlate the Wells, so double-click that item, as shown
below:

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The process of Log Correlation examines the current depth-time conversion table and optimizes it
so that the derived synthetic optimally matches the seismic. This is necessary because the depth-
time curve derived from the input sonic log is rarely sufficient for that purpose. Of course, if check
shot data are available, that should be applied first. But experience has shown that fine- tuning of
the correlation between the synthetic and seismic is still required.

In practice, each of the wells used to build the inversion model needs to be correlated. For this
tutorial, we have only one well. The dialog which appears allows us to specify which seismic
volume will be used for the correlation process, and how the composite trace will be extracted from
that volume:

In the process of correlation, the program compares a synthetic trace with an average or composite
trace from the real data volume. This dialog specifies which volume (angle_gather) is used for the
trace extraction.

We create the composite trace by averaging the traces around the borehole location which we are
using for the seismic correlation. For a vertical well, such as this one, that means averaging a
selected set of neighboring traces around the borehole. By default this is plus or minus 1 inline
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or crossline:

For deviated wells, the process is more complex and involves averaging traces which are a
specified distance from the deviation path.

The wavelet group which we have previously created is selected:

There are 3 options to create synthetic in this page, here we select Zero-offset Synthetic in this
tutorial.

Since the synthetic is calculated using the zero-offset equation, it is usually desirable to limit the
real traces to the near angles. This is also usually the cleanest data. For this reason, we set the
maximum angle to 15°. When you have made the change shown above, click OK on this dialog.

The Log Correlation Window now appears:

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The blue traces on this display are synthetic traces calculated from the sonic and density logs in this
well, using the depth-time curve currently stored in the database and the wavelet group we have
previously extracted:

The red traces are the average or “composite” traces extracted from the seismic data. Actually all
the red traces are identical, since there is only a single composite trace.

The plot at the upper right shows the cross correlation between the synthetic trace and the
composite trace:

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That correlation result depends on the analysis window, which can be improved. The cross
correlation window defaults to be the largest possible window containing both the synthetic and
real trace. This can usually be improved by narrowing the analysis to the region when the log tie is
best:

The correlation plot now shows a maximum correlation of 68 %, but that is at a lag of 52 ms, which
is not reasonable and corresponds to a spurious correlation:

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To limit the search result, change the Lag to 40 ms and click Apply:

Now the correlation plot shows a correlation coefficient of 44% with a shift in the synthetic of 1 ms
up:

That information is also displayed on the menu bar at the base of the window:

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Click the Apply Shift button to apply the suggested -1 ms shift.

We could continue to improve this correlation by extracting a wavelet using the wells, but for this
tutorial, we will assume that the current correlation is satisfactory. Click OK to accept this
correlation.

A dialog pops up suggesting a name for the new sonic log we have created by the log correlation
process. Even though this process, by default, has only changed the depth-time curve and not the
actual sonic log, Geoview calculates a new sonic log (identical to the previous) as a place holder
for identifying the new depth-time curve. Click OK to accept that new name:

Building the Initial Model

We are now ready to perform the next step on the workflow, which is Build Initial Model. Double-
click that item on the workflow list:

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The dialog which appears contains the default parameters for building the standard pre-stack
inversion model. By default, all the wells are selected:

We will use all the horizons in the project:

After interpolating the well log curves, a low-pass frequency filter will be applied, which, by
default, passes all frequencies up to 10 Hz, filters all frequencies above 15 Hz, and interpolates
the filter between those limits.

There are many additional Advanced parameters, which you can examine by clicking the
Show Advanced Options button:

For this tutorial, click Run to accept the defaults.

The Geoview window now shows the calculated initial model within the Models tab:

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Actually, we can get a better display of the model by turning off (temporarily) the trace plotting.
To do that, right-click on the display area and choose the option shown below:

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We now see the P-impedance initial model.

That model actually consists of three components, P-impedance, S-impedance, and density. We
can see any of the other components by right-clicking as shown:

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Performing Inversion Analysis

The next step is to perform Inversion Analysis. This is the process of running inversion at the
well locations to QC and optimize the inversion parameters. At the same time, scalars are
automatically determined which scale the input seismic data to the amplitude range of the synthetic
seismic data. On the workflow, double-click Inversion Analysis:

The dialog which appears contains default selections of the main parameters. These are usually
appropriate.

In this case, we are using the seismic data called angle_gather and we are inverting the entire time
window:

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We are using the initial model previously generated, as shown in the following menu:

We are using all the wells in the inversion analysis. Note that you can use different wells than the
wells used to build the initial model:

We are also using the wavelet group previously extracted:

Now click Next on the Inversion Analysis dialog to see the next page:

Now the following dialog appears:

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Pre-stack inversion is a generally non-unique process. This means there are many geological
answers consistent with the input seismic data. One way Geoview uses to reduce the non-
uniqueness is to provide a background trend relating the variables Zp, Zs, and density. This dialog
contains that trend information, as derived from the well logs in the model.

The window shows plots of ZS vs ZP and Density vs ZP on a log-log scale. The assumption in this
process is that, in the absence of hydrocarbons, there is a roughly linear relationship between these
variables. The program then looks for deviations from these linear trends. The red lines indicate the
current linear trend, which has been fit automatically through the points.

Generally, the automatically derived trend lines are quite acceptable. However, sometimes it is best
to manually adjust them. For example, let’s modify the right-hand graph, density vs Z P :

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We would like to change the red regression line on this graph. To do that, first click near the line to
“select” it for editing. Small circles appear at the ends of the line to indicate that is ready:

Now, grab the end of the line and move it:

By manipulating both ends of the line, we get it to look something like this:

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The rest of the menu shows the derived regression coefficients for the two plots. Note that the
exact placement of the line is not critical, since the inversion result is not sensitive to small
deviations. When you have aligned the plots roughly as shown, click OK to save this result:

Now we see the dialog showing all the remaining parameters used in pre-stack inversion:

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These parameters can be defaulted for most projects. Also, we will have a chance to modify them
later during the Inversion Analysis process. Click OK to start that.

The Inversion Analysis window now appears, showing the inversion result at the well location:

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From left to right, the display shows the inversion results (in red) overlaying the original logs from
the well. To the right of that, we see the synthetic traces calculated from this inversion (in red)
followed by the original seismic angle gather (in black). Finally, we see the error gather, which is
the difference between the two previous results. As hoped, the error is small, indicating that the
inversion is mathematically correct, i.e., this inversion creates a synthetic trace which matches the
real trace.

To the upper right of the display are a series of buttons, which allow us to fine-tune the inversion.
For example, the Wavelet button allows you to manipulate the inversion wavelet. This is the first
button at the top, with a wavelet “cartoon” on it. If you hold the mouse pointer over this button, the
word “Wavelet” will appear.

Left-click this button to get the following menu:

A Model button allows us to view and change the initial model parameters:

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An Invert button brings up a dialog allowing us to change the inversion parameters:

For this tutorial, we will accept all the default parameters. Click Close to close the Inversion
Parameters dialog:

Applying the Inversion

Now that we have optimized the parameters at the well locations, the last step is to apply the
inversion to the entire volume. Double-click the last item on the workflow, as shown below:

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The dialog which appears shows all the inversion parameters which we have already set during
the inversion analysis phase. The only significant parameters to set here involve the data range
and time range of the input volume to be inverted:

In this case, we will invert the entire volume, so click Run at the base of the dialog to start that
process.

When the inversion process is done, the result is displayed in a split-screen along with the initial
model:

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Modifying the Inversion display

The default split-screen display is very useful for looking at the results, but there are many
improvements possible.

For example, you can increase the available plot space by clicking on the “x” on the Project
Manager window, as shown, to temporarily hide that window:

To restore the Project Manager window, click its name to the left:

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You can also temporarily hide one of the views. For example, click on the first icon shown below
to temporarily hide View 1, which shows the model:

To restore View 1, click it again:

View 2 is currently showing the derived Z P volume:

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Actually, there are three more volumes loaded into this view. To see one of the others, right-click
within the window as shown:

Now the V P /V S volume is showing in View 2:

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Even more useful is to see two output volumes at the same time. To do this, open up View 3 by
clicking the third icon:

Now there are three windows, but one of them is blank:

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Move a copy of the output data into View 3 by left-clicking anywhere within the View 2 display
and, holding the left mouse button down, dragging it to the empty View 3:

Now we have the V P /V S volume visible in both View 2 and 3:

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Finally, right click the View 2 display and change that to show Z P :

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Exiting the project

We have now finished the Pre-Stack Inversion project. Close down the entire Geoview program by
clicking File>Exit on the Geoview window:

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