This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal.
Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
A Supervised Descent Learning Technique for
Solving Directional Electromagnetic
Logging-While-Drilling
Inverse Problems
Yanyan Hu , Rui Guo , Yuchen Jin , Xuqing Wu , Maokun Li , Aria Abubakar,
and Jiefu Chen , Member, IEEE
Abstract— In this article, a new scheme based on the supervised
descent method (SDM) for solving directional electromagnetic
logging-while-drilling (LWD) inverse problems is proposed. The
SDM provides us a new perspective to combine the classical
gradient-based inversion and machine-learning-based inversion
schemes. It iteratively learns a set of descent directions in the
offline training process, where the training model set is generated
in advance according to the prior information, and then updates
the models with the learned descent directions as well as data
residuals in the prediction stage, resulting in great flexibility to
incorporate prior information, the capability of skipping local
minima, and accelerated convergence. The generalization ability
of the SDM to interrogate new models that are not contained in
the training model set is also explored. By utilizing real-time
information obtained from the logging process, the learned
descent directions can be slightly revised with a higher efficiency
to get closer to the true model. In addition, we probe the
sensitivity of the SDM by adding different levels of random
noise to the measurements. Numerical examples demonstrate
that SDM-based inversion can achieve a higher resolution, faster
convergence, and higher robustness than conventional schemes
such as Occam’s inversion.
Index Terms— Descent directions learning, directional electro-
magnetic logging-while-drilling (LWD), inverse problem, machine
learning, supervised descent method (SDM), well logging.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A CCURATE inversion of directional electromagnetic (also
known as azimuthal resistivity) logging-while-drilling
(LWD) measurements plays an essential role in geosteering,
a technique to adjust actively the borehole position on the
fly to reach geological targets [1]. It is also crucial for appli-
cations including reservoir mapping, landing fault detection,
and salt edge detection. However, the inversion of directional
electromagnetic LWD measurements faces all the typical
Manuscript received December 19, 2019; revised March 3, 2020; accepted
March 29, 2020. (Corresponding author: Jiefu Chen.)
Yanyan Hu, Yuchen Jin, and Jiefu Chen are with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, Houston,
TX 77004 USA (e-mail: chenjiefu@gmail.com).
Rui Guo and Maokun Li are with Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084,
China.
Xuqing Wu is with the Department of Computer Information Systems,
University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004 USA.
Aria Abubakar is with Schlumberger, Houston, TX 77478 USA.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TGRS.2020.2986000
0196-2892 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1
difficulties in solving inverse problems [2], such as non-
linearity, ill-posedness, as well as nonuniqueness, especially
when using the newly emerged ultradeep azimuthal resistivity
LWD tools that have a large depth of investigation and
require more inversion parameters to describe the subsurface
structure [3].
A variety of optimization methods have been applied to
interpret the directional electromagnetic LWD measurements,
among which the deterministic methods are prevalent due
to its straightforward implementation and fast convergence
through iteratively minimizing the discrepancy between the
measurements and the forward model responses [4], [5].
Regularization is utilized to reduce the ill-posedness of the
problem and stabilize the optimization by imposing extra
constraints [6]. Plenty of algorithms, including the gradient
descent method and the Gauss–Newton method [7], [8], are
widely used to solve this inversion problem. However, for
complicated logging inverse problems with high nonlinearity,
deterministic methods consider only the local properties of
the objective function and are prone to be trapped into local
minima. Meanwhile, deterministic schemes are limited to
incorporate prior information only by regularization. On the
other hand, plenty of prior knowledge from the experience
of geologists and geophysicists is difficult to be expressed in
rigorous mathematical forms [9].
As an alternative, statistical methods governed by the
Bayesian theorem can conquer the local minima prob-
lem by the sampling approach like Markov chain Monte
Carlo (MCMC) [10]. It computes the posterior distribution
from the likelihood function and the prior probability [11].
However, statistical inversion is oftentimes time-consuming,
leading to the difficulty to expand to high-dimension sce-
narios (and real-time requirements in geosteering). Hybrid
Monte Carlo [12], nonparametric sampling [13], and parallel
multiple-chain delayed rejection adaptive Metropolis (DRAM)
MCMC [14] have been adopted to improve the sampling
efficiency, but a fast inversion scheme is still necessary.
Deep neural network (DNN) has been applied to solve the
inverse problems, performing as a surrogate mapping from
the data space to the model space [15]–[21]. Furthermore,
the conventional iterative scheme can be incorporated into
deep learning framework [22], [23] to make the learning
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
process more reasonable. The DNN can extract the implicit
mapping relationship between the measurements and the mod-
els through the training process and then use the learned con-
nections to guide the inversion of similar new measurements to
converge to a rational model in reality. This scheme provides a
new prospective to introduce prior information to improve the
accuracy or to accelerate the convergence except for adopting
regularization, especially when prior knowledge is difficult to
describe in rigorous form. In addition, plenty of efforts have
also been made to integrate the so-called physical loss from
the system constraints, and forward model or loss function
modification is introduced to guide the DNN [24]–[28]. This
is also inspiring, because the physical modeling or constraints
are valuable to understand the physics and instruct the model
reconstruction comparing with just a “black box” mapping
between the data and model spaces [15]. Another promising
characteristic of deep learning is its high efficiency, because
the time-consuming training is only needed to be done once
and the prediction will be rapid with the direct utilization of
the well-trained network.
However, despite the high accuracy and efficiency of the
data- or physics-driven DNN, it has its own limitation. For the
inversion of electromagnetic LWD measurements, it is difficult
to describe the subsurface structure with a limited number of
parameters when extending to high-dimension scenarios, while
the more the parameters, the more expensive the training of the
network. In addition, end-to-end implementation oftentimes
implies limited generalization ability.
In this article, we study the application of an efficient
and robust supervised descent method (SDM) for solving
directional electromagnetic LWD inverse problems. Further
improvement is also explored according to the characteristics
of the LWD and geosteering applications. Considering the
essence of geophysical inversion is to reconstruct the sub-
surface structures with not only the measurements but also
the geological/geophysical and prior knowledge; the SDM
combines the machine learning scheme and the advantages
of the conventional methods. The SDM was first proposed
in [29] to solve the optimization problems in computer vision.
Then, it has been applied for 1-D transient electromagnetic
(TEM) [30] inverse problems as well as first-arrival travel-time
tomography [31]. The structure of this article is organized
as follows. Section II introduces the directional electromag-
netic LWD and basic methodology of SDM-based inversion.
Section III illustrates a detailed implementation of inversion
using the SDM as well as improvement strategies for LWD
and geosteering applications. In Section IV, numerical exam-
ples are given to validate the performances of the SDM,
the effectiveness of improvement strategies, as well as the
generalization ability. Meanwhile, the efficiency and sensitivity
analysis are also illustrated. Section V concludes this article.
II. T HEORY AND M ETHODOLOGY
A. Directional Electromagnetic LWD
Directional electromagnetic LWD tools are widely used
in directional drilling and geosteering [1], [32]. Equipped
with tilted or transverse antennas, the tool can distinguish
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
the direction of the boundary-crossing as well as the forma-
tion anisotropy [33], [34]. The recently developed ultradeep
azimuthal resistivity LWD tool can reach to over 100 ft
from the borehole owing to the employment of very low
working frequency and long spacings between the transmitting
and receiving antennas [35]–[38]. The new generation of the
directional electromagnetic LWD tool expands the application
of geosteering to the reservoir-scale and, on the same time,
raises greater challenges for subsurface structure inversion and
interpretation.
A directional electromagnetic LWD tool takes the mea-
surements of earth’s electrical properties by propagating
the electromagnetic waves into formation using transmitting
antennas and then capturing the electromagnetic signal by
receiving antennas and transforming them into signal atten-
uations and phase shifts [39]. To reconstruct the resistivity
profile surrounding the wellbore, the interpretation of multi-
channel measurements is indispensable. Since tool responses
could be synthesized by simulation using a physical forward
model F (·), the interpretation could be viewed as an inverse
problem, F −1 (·), where we need to reconstruct the formation
properties from the observed measurements.
Generally speaking, there are two different approaches,
model-based and pixel-based, used to describe the subsurface
structures. In the model-based approach, the inversion domain
is divided into several regions described by the geometric
models based on prior information. The resistivity is assumed
to be homogeneous in each region. Under this condition,
the parameters we need to invert contain the resistivity of
each subregion and the position of each boundary. On the
contrary, in pixel-based inversion, we divide the inversion
domain into uniform or nonuniform small cells, in which the
parameters need to be inverted are only resistivity of each cell.
Overall, model-based inversion, with less unknowns, is often-
times an overdetermined problem but with strong nonlinearity.
Moreover, in this scheme, a model needs to be assumed in
advance, which may lead to model unconformity. Another
drawback of model-based inversion is that its capabilities to
be extended to 2-D/3-D cases are very limited. On the other
hand, pixel-based inversion has more unknowns and usually is
an underdetermined problem, so we need to add regularization
to decrease its ill-posedness. However, one of the advantages
of pixel-base inversion is that it can be easily extended to
2-D/3-D cases and has generalization ability in a degree. In this
article, we will focus on the pixel-based inversion of the
directional electromagnetic LWD measurements.
B. SDM Theory
The inversion of the directional electromagnetic LWD data
can be regarded as a nonlinear data-fitting process that aims
at obtaining a detailed estimation of the subsurface properties
through minimizing the following target function:
L(m) = F (m) − dobs 22 (1)
where dobs is the observed data acquired in a logging survey
and F (m) is the synthetic data generated from the forward
model F (·) with the estimated resistivity model m. That is
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

HU et al.: SUPERVISED DESCENT LEARNING TECHNIQUE 3

to say, the misfit between the observed data and the synthetic III. I NVERSION W ITH SDM
data is represented by (1). The corresponding model m that A. Offline Training Framework
minimizes the misfit is considered as the solution of the LWD
inverse problem. To describe the complicated subsurface structures, the total
According to Newton’s method, an iterative scheme can be number of needed pixels is usually large, introducing artificial
adopted to update m so that L(m) tends to decrease. Taking fluctuation into the inverted resistivity model even when the
the second-order Taylor expansion of L(m) with respect to training data misfit is small. This is mainly because of the
m and assuming L(m) is twice differentiable, we have ill-posedness of the problem. As mentioned before, regular-
ization is adopted to decrease the ill-posedness and stabilize
1 the inversion, which is beneficial to suppress the artificial
L(m0 + m) ≈ L(m0 )+JL (m0 )T m+ mT HL (m0 )m
2 fluctuation [40]. Therefore, loss function in (5) can be modified
(2) as
N 
   
where m0 is the value of m in the last iteration, JL (m0 ) is Lrk = mn − Kk dn 2 + λr (Kk )2 (7)
k k 2 2
the Jacobian matrix of L at m0 , and HL (m0 ) is the Hessian n=1
matrix of L at m0 . The minimum of (2) can be reached when
the gradient of L with respect to m is zero, that is where λ is the Lagrange multiplier to balance the regular-
ization and r (Kk ) is the regularization function. The regular-
m = −HL (m)−1 JL (m) ization function is supposed to impose constraints on model
parameter m, which also constrains the computation of Kk .
= −2HL (m)−1 JF (m)T (F (m) − dobs ) (3) Here, we employ the smoothest constraint regulariza-
tion [40] and define r (Kk ) as
where JF is the Jacobian matrix of F(·). For nonlinear F (·),
m needs to be updated iteratively with (3) to reach at r (Kk ) = ∇(mk + Kk dk ) (8)
least a local minimum of L(m). However, it is time- and
memory-consuming to compute the Hessian matrix, not to where ∇ is the differential matrix and
⎡ ⎤
mention the inversion of the Hessian matrix in each iteration. 1 0 ··· 0
The overhead is still large even with the Gauss–Newton ⎢ −1 1 ··· 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
method where we approximate the Hessian matrix with JF T
JF . ⎢ 0 −1 ··· 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
Thus, instead of computing the Hessian matrix or Jacobian ∇=⎢ . .. ⎥
.. (9)
⎢ .. . ⎥
.
matrix, we define K = −2HL (m)−1 JF (m)T as the update ⎢ ⎥
⎣ 0 0 ··· 1 ⎦
direction operator, and K is learned in each iteration from a
training model set generated according to prior information 0 0 ··· −1
during the offline training stage. Then, (3) can be simplified which means that the gradient of the resistivity between the
to adjacent pixels is minimized. To minimize Lrk , (7) can be
rewritten in matrix form
m = K(F (x) − dobs ) = Kd (4)  2
Lrk = Mk − Dk KkT  F
where d = F (x) − dobs , representing the data error between   2
+ λ Mk + Dk KkT ∇ 2 (10)
the synthetic and observed data. In the kth iteration, an aver-
age gradient descent Kk can be obtained by minimizing the where F represents the Frobenius norm, and
following cost function: ⎡ T
⎤ ⎡ T
⎤
mk1 dk1
N 
   ⎢ T ⎥ ⎢ T ⎥
mn − Kk dn 2 ⎢ mk2 ⎥ ⎢ dk2 ⎥
Lk = (5) ⎢ ⎥
Mk = ⎢ . ⎥ Dk = ⎢ . ⎢ ⎥. (11)
⎥
⎣ .. ⎦ ⎣ ..
k k 2
n=1 ⎦
T T
mkN dkN
where N is the number of training samples, and
Following the least square criterion, we get:
mkn = m∗n − mkn  −1  
    KkT = DkT Dk DkT Mk − λMk ∇∇ T G(λ) (12)
dkn = d∗n − dkn = F m∗n − F mkn (6)
where
in which m∗n is the nth training model, mkn is the updated  −1
model of the nth training model in the kth iteration, and d∗n G(λ) = I + λ∇∇ T . (13)
and dkn are the synthetic data of m∗n and mkn correspondingly.
Through the training procedure, a sequence of coefficient Then, KkT can be utilized to update the model as
matrices K1 , K2 , . . . , Kk are computed and preserved for the Mk+1 = Mk + Dk KkT . (14)
online prediction stage, during which the model update item
m can be directly updated according to (4) by iteratively The same process is repeated in the k + 1 iteration until
applying the series of Kk . the maximum number of iterations is reached, or the relative

Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING

Fig. 1. Offline training flowchart of the SDM.

model and data misfit are small enough, where the relative
model misfit is defined as
1  mkn 2
N
rms M = (15)
N n=1 m∗n 2

and the relative data misfit is defined as

1  dkn 2
N
rms D = . (16)
N n=1 d∗n 2

During the training stage, λ is set according to the relative data

misfit rms D in each iteration. Fast convergence at the first steps
and influence of rms D at the last steps are guaranteed through
this involvement of rms D to λ. Many other settings are also
feasible. From our experience of solving the logging inverse
problem with SDM, rms M and rms D decrease very fast, and
in general, it is large enough to set the maximal iteration as
20. Overall, the flowchart of the offline training stage is shown
in Fig. 1.
B. Online Prediction Framework
During the online prediction stage, the same initial model is
applied as that in the training stage and the model parameters
can be directly updated by iteratively adopting the learned
descent directions Kk and the data residual [31]. We can also
incorporate constrains to the model parameters to stabilize
further the prediction process. Thus, the objective function to
be optimized during the kth iteration is formulated as
 2
Pkr (mk ) = mk − mk−1 − Kk−1 dk−1 22 + α ∇ T mk 2 (17)
 2
where ∇ T mk 2 is the regularization term and α is the
regularization coefficient whose setting is similar to λ in (10).
The corresponding solution of (17) is
mk = G(α)(Kk−1 dk−1 + mk−1 )
where G(α) is defined in (13) and dk−1 = dobs − F (mk−1 ),
in which dobs is the measurement to be fit.
The flowchart of online prediction is shown in Fig. 2. The
SDM avoids computing the derivatives of the cost function,
Fig. 2. Online prediction flowchart of the SDM.
and therefore, it can achieve high efficiency during the pre-
diction stage. In each iteration of the prediction, if we assume
the length of the model vector and the data vector as M
and L, respectively, the complexity of computing Kk−1 dk−1
is O(ML), which can be approximated as the overall complex-
ity of updating mk , since G(α) is quite sparse. Before that,
the forward modeling is executed for one time to compute the
data error dk−1 . Therefore, the total time complexity of a
I-step prediction is O(IML) plus I times forward modeling.
Note that not all the Ks are required during the prediction
procedure, because the learned Ks in the last few iterations
may lose its directionality when the updated model gets close
to the true model [31]. Therefore, the relative data misfit
rms D is monitored during each iteration. The iteration will
be terminated if it reaches the maximal limitation or if rms D
does not continue to decrease. Moreover, the prediction needs
to be stopped if rms D diverges in the first few iterations,
which may occur when the testing model is quite different
(18) from the training models, indicating that prior information is
not accurate or relevant enough. This also makes sense for
guiding our directions to solve the problem.
In addition, compared with the Gauss–Newton method that
considers only the local property (the first- or second-order
derivatives) and gets trapped easily into local minima,

Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
HU et al.: SUPERVISED DESCENT LEARNING TECHNIQUE
the training and testing scheme endows SDM with the ability
to skip the local minima that are not included in the training
set during the prediction stage. Detailed explanation can be
found in [30].
C. Training Model Set Design
The SDM possesses great flexibility and capability of incor-
porating prior information, which is fulfilled by extracting
certain pattern features that are difficult to be described or
formulated in a rigorous form from the training models. When
the prior information is reasonable enough, the intake of
more specific pattern features in the training models will lead
to predictions that are more accurate. On the other hand,
the generalization ability is limited under this circumstance
due to the relative fixed pattern of training models.
The generalization ability of the SDM to interpolate new
structures that are not included in the training model set is
achieved by weighting the descent directions with the data
residual in the online prediction stage. To enhance further the
generalization ability as well as the robustness of the online
prediction, more general models instead of specific ones are
recommended when setting up the training model set.
Moreover, except for adopting more general models,
the diversity of the training set can be built up by incorporating
the models of different patterns. For example, if we already
know that the true model has five layers in most of the logging
points, a small portion is not. Then, we can add three-layer
or four-layer models into the training model set that primarily
contains five-layer models. The descent direction learned from
this mixed training model set can reflect multiple patterns,
which means that by tuning the size of different patterns of the
training model sets, we can adjust the likelihood of the prior
knowledge, and hence obtain more flexibility to incorporate
various types of prior information. This is also helpful if the
accurate prior information is unknown.
D. Real-Time Feedback and Update
Considering the practice of the LWD procedure, real-time
feedback from downhole can be utilized to update the descent
direction K. Resistivity along the trajectory is assumed to
be known after drilling through a certain region. Therefore,
whenever there is a new layer, K can be updated according to
the real-time feedback. In practice, the situation could be more
complicated and the inversion result can be a good reference
to set the parameters. With the new and accurate information
of resistivity, two strategies can be applied. One is that a large
amount of new training models can be resampled according to
the updated prior information, followed by a newly computed
Kreplace applied to invert the next logging point. We call this
as the K replacing method. The other, named the K updating
method, is that only a small number of models is regenerated
according to the updated prior information. Then, a descent
direction Krevise can be fast computed and employed to update
the original K, which can be described as
Kupdate = γ K + (1 − γ )Krevise
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
5
where γ is the weighting coefficient and 0 < γ < 1. We would
suggest keeping γ close to 1 so that K is only slightly revised.
Note that the K replacing method can get more accurate
prediction theoretically, because Kreplace extracts the more
specific pattern updated by the new and accurate feedback.
However, it is time-consuming to retrain or relearn a new
Kreplace whenever new feedback is received. In addition, there
might be potential risks that the retrained descent directions
have a limited scope of application if the new feedback has
too strong local properties. On the contrary, slightly revising
original K may not obtain as accurate prediction as the K
replacing method, but it takes little time to compute Kupdate ,
which can better reflect current pattern features while retaining
the generalization ability of the original descent directions.
That is also why we suggest keeping γ close to 1. Hence,
the K updating method is more desirable considering the
overall benefit.
In the K updating method, supposing the number of resam-
pled training models for one updating is N  (N  is small,
usually smaller than 20), we assume that the resistivities of
the layers above the newly occurred layer are already known,
so we would fix them and resample the updating training
model set. Then, we can acquire Krevise by minimizing (5)
based on this resampled training model set. Specific example
is illustrated in Section IV-A3. The Levenberg–Marquardt
algorithm is used to stabilize the solution when Dk becomes
singular, so
 −1
T
Kk_revise = DkT Dk + μI DkT Mk (20)
where μ is the damping factor set to be proportional to the
maximal eigenvalue of Dk , and Dk and Mk are defined
in (11). Finally, Krevise can be obtained by assembling the
T
series of Kk_revise .
IV. N UMERICAL E XAMPLES
In this section, we first validate the effectiveness of inversion
with SDM using synthetic data and compare with traditional
Occam’s inversion [40], during which improvement of adopt-
ing the K updating strategy is also displayed. Then, the gen-
eralization ability of the SDM is demonstrated by training
with the model set consisting of three-layer models and testing
with the four- or five-layer models. In addition, the applicative
boundary is explored to an extent. Next, the efficiency com-
parison between SDM and Occam’s inversion is given. Finally,
the robustness of the SDM is validated by sensitivity analysis.
Note that we add random noise to the synthetic measurements,
in which the noise level of attenuation is 0.08 dB and that of
phase shift is 0.5◦ .
All examples discussed in this article are based on 1-D mod-
eling, i.e., the transmitters are treated as point magnetic dipole
sources, and the formations are assumed as layered media.
As analytical solutions in this circumstance are available [41],
generating one training sample takes less than 1 ms on average
on a four-Core i7 desktop with parallel operation.
A. Validation of the Algorithm
With the pixel-based method, the parameters we need to
(19) invert are only resistivities. We discretized the resistivity
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING

TABLE I
S ETUP FOR P IXEL -BASED I NVERSION IN THE N UMERICAL
E XPERIMENT (T HREE -L AYER C ASE )

between ±100 ft vertically with respect to the LWD tool using

nonuniform grids. The thickness is 3 ft when the distance of
the pixel to the tool is less than 30 ft, while for the rest of
the pixels, the thickness increases in a ratio of 1.05. Assuming
with the prior knowledge, we have already known the structure
information as well as a rough estimation of resistivities, from
which we randomly sampled 1000 models as m∗ train to learn
the descent directions. Then, another set of random models
m∗ test were generated to test the inversion performance. Note
that the initial parameters should be set as the same in the
training and testing stages. Here, we adopted two scenarios,
three-layer and five-layer model sets, to validate our algorithm.
We set λ and α to one-tenth of the relative data misfit in both
scenarios.
1) Three-Layer Examples: Training with the model set
consisting of three-layer models and testing with random
models and continuous earth model.
In this example, the training and testing setup is listed
in Table I, where r 1, r 2, and r 3 are the resistivities of each
layer from top to bottom, z is the position of the upper
boundary, and t is the thickness of the middle layer. In the
training stage, we set the maximum step of iterations as 15.
In each iteration, the relative model misfit rms M and data misfit
rms D were computed according to (15) and (16), respectively,
and are shown in Fig. 3(a) and (b), from which we can see that
both of the model and data misfit converge within 15 iterations.
During the online prediction, as previous description,
the iteration will stop when it reaches the maximum step or
if the relative data misfit is less than the preset level. Then,
the inverted models of the SDM are plotted in Fig. 4 with
blue solid lines. By comparing with the true model drawn
in red dotted lines, we can see a promising result that the
constructed models well reflect the structure of the true ones,
no matter the thickness of the conductive layer, the positions
of the boundaries, and the values of the resistivities.
Meanwhile, as a comparison, we inverted the same syn-
thetic measurements with Occam’s inversion and plotted the
reconstructed models in Fig. 4 with green dashed lines.
In Occam’s inversion, the Jacobian matrix is needed and
computed with the finite-difference approach. It is reasonable
to say that these results reflect the changes in the subsurface
structure. However, the layer boundaries, especially the upper
boundaries, are not as clear as that inverted by the SDM and
the values of the inverted resistivities are also less accurate.
One of the reasons is that we added noise to the data. The
other is mainly because prior information incorporated by
Fig. 3. Training relative misfits of a three-layer case. (a) Relative model
misfit. (b) Relative data misfit.
only adding regularization in Occam’s inversion is limited,
while the learned descent gradients in the SDM have more
boundary and resistivity information from the training model
set to reconstruct models. Furthermore, as shown in Fig. 4(b),
the second boundary of the true model is close to the logging
tool, which leads to increasing the difficulty of inversion.
The whole part of the reconstructed resistivities of Occam’s
inversion below the second boundary fluctuates heavily, while
the SDM handles this scenario much better. This is partially
because of prior information that provides constraint to the
flatness of each layer and partially due to smoothness regular-
ization added during both training and prediction stages.
We then tested on a continuous earth model with fixed true
vertical depth (TVD). This continuous earth model is a pseudo-
2-D model stitched by 1-D models from 80 logging points.
It is a three-layer model with a conductive layer embedded
in the less conductive background shown in Fig. 5(a), where
we also add the nonuniform meshes used in the experiment.
First, we learned the decent directions from the training model
set constructed according to prior information (also shown
in Table I) and then applied these descent directions to the
synthetic data generated from Fig. 5(a), which explains why
SDM can achieve high efficiency. It is because in the same
logging survey, training is only needed to be done for one
time. The inverted model by the SDM is shown in Fig. 5(b),
and the corresponding reconstructed models with Occam’s

Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

HU et al.: SUPERVISED DESCENT LEARNING TECHNIQUE 7

Fig. 4. Inversion of three-layer random models. (a)–(d) Four different profiles.

inversion are shown in Fig. 5(c). For this continuous model,

the position of the upper boundary in the left-hand-side part
is hard to reconstruct, because the middle conductive layer
has a shielding effect on the upper less conductive one. It is
difficult to formulate this kind of prior information or describe
it in a rigorous form to perform as a regularization function.
That explains why Occam’s inversion does not get a good
performance in this area. However, by properly constructing
the training models, SDM inversion can embody this prior
knowledge and achieve a higher resolution than Occam’s
inversion.
2) Five-Layer Examples: Training with the model set con-
sisting of five-layer models and testing with random models
and continuous earth model.
In this example, the corresponding training and testing setup
is listed in Table II, where r , z, and t represent the resistivities, Fig. 5. Inversion results of a three-layer continuous model by different meth-
ods. (a) True model. (b) Reconstructed model by SDM. (c) Reconstructed
the position of the first boundary, and the thickness of each model by Occam’s inversion.
layer, respectively. The maximum step is set as 15, which is
reasonable according to the training relative model misfit rms M
and relative data misfit rms D shown in Fig. 6. further validates not only the effectiveness of SDM inversion
The inverted results are illustrated in Fig. 7, where the red but also its advantages compared with Occam’s inversion.
dotted, blue solid, and green dashed lines represent the true Here, we also tested on a five-layer continuous synthetic
model, model reconstructed by SDM, and Occam’s inversion, model shown in Fig. 8(a) (similarly the nonuniform meshes
respectively. From Fig. 7, we can conclude that the structure are drawn), in which there are 81 logging points in total.
feature is better captured by SDM inversion, in which the It is also a pseudo-2-D model stitched by 1-D models and
boundaries as well as values of resistivities agree well with the the training model set is sampled according to Table II.
true models, especially when two boundaries are close to each Fig. 8(b) and (c) shows the reconstructed models by SDM
other, while models reconstructed by Occam’s inversion still and Occam’s inversion. From these results, both SDM and
have vague or even indistinguishable boundaries. This example Occam’s inversion perform well in the first half logging points

Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
TABLE II
S ETTINGS FOR P IXEL -BASED I NVERSION IN THE N UMERICAL
E XPERIMENT (F IVE -L AYER C ASE )
Fig. 6. Training relative misfits of five-layer case. (a) Relative model misfit.
(b) Relative data misfit.
and provide relative accurate inversions. In the middle parts,
SDM can still invert the top layer with a clear boundary but
not Occam’s inversion because of the similar shielding effect
explained before. In the last several logging points, with the
logging tool going deeper, neither SDM nor Occam’s inversion
performs well. For SDM, it is mainly because the pattern of
the models in this part is different from that in the training
model set, which means the prior information is not accurate
enough in this circumstance. It is reasonable for the SDM
not getting as good results as when the prior information is
accurate. For Occam’s inversion, it will be difficult to improve
the performance of the models in the right-hand-side part
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Fig. 7. Inversion of five-layer random models. (a)–(d) Four different profiles.
of Fig. 8(c). However, for SDM, we do have strategies to
improve the reconstructed models as aforementioned.
3) Update of K With Real-Time Feedback Information:
First, as illustrated in Section III-C, we added four-layer
models to the training model set to increase its diversity,
which would enhance the learned descent directions’ ability
to interpolate multiple patterns of the structures that are very
different from the training set or change in a large range.
We set the ratio of five-layer models to four-layer models
as 1:1, totaling 1000 samples. Fig. 9(a) shows the inversion
result of employing this strategy. We can see that the four-layer
part can be distinguished even though the boundary is not clear
enough. This result validates the effectiveness of the training
model set design strategy.
The second strategy is to update the descent directions
with real-time feedback from downhole, as described in
Section III-D. Here, we set γ as 0.9 and resampled 16 training
models (one half is five-layer models and the other half is
T
four-layer models) to learn Kk_revise in (20). To be specific,
as shown in Fig. 9(a), when the logging tool enters the
fourth layer, we assume that we have already known that
the resistivities of the first three layers are 90, 2, and 80 .
Therefore, we fix parameters r 1, r 2, and r 3 in Table II
as 90, 2, and 80, respectively, and resample the updating
training model set. Then, Kupdate can be computed accord-
ing to (19) and used for the following inversion. We can
update the directions whenever we know there is a new layer.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
HU et al.: SUPERVISED DESCENT LEARNING TECHNIQUE
Fig. 8. Inversion results of the five-layer continuous model from different
methods. (a) True model. (b) Reconstructed model from SDM. (c) Recon-
structed model from Occam’s inversion.
The improved reconstructed model is shown in Fig. 9(b),
by which we can see in the right-hand-side part that the
boundaries are clearer than that in Fig. 9(a), especially in the
four-layer region.
B. Generalization Ability Analysis
To test the generalization ability of the SDM, we use the
descent directions learned from a training model set consist-
ing of only three-layer models to invert the synthetic data
generated from the four- or five-layer models. This scenario
also demonstrates the application of the SDM where the prior
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
9
Fig. 9. Improved inversion results of five-layer continuous model. (a) Recon-
structed model by training model set design. (b) Reconstructed model by
updating K with real-time feedback.
information is absent or limited. Fig. 10 shows the recon-
structed models with the blue solid lines, while the true model
with red dotted lines, from which we can see the results
reasonably, shows the layers although there is some inac-
curacy of resistivities. According to the previous experience
of training model set design, it is plausible to add other
multiple-layer models into the training set to improve the
reconstructed models even though we do not know the prior
information. For now, further research is needed to explore the
boundary of the generalization ability in this inverse problem.
Moreover, we do test the situation where the prior is not
accurate enough or the pattern of the test sample is quite differ-
ent from that of the training samples to explore the applicative
boundary of the SDM. The results are shown in Fig. 11. The
examples we demonstrated in Section IV-A1 follow the pattern
as high resistivity-low resistivity-high resistivity. The trained
K can extract the feature of this pattern and give us an accurate
inversion when the testing pattern is similar. However, when
we apply the same K to invert the measurements generated
from the true model shown in Fig. 11(a) whose pattern is low
resistivity-high resistivity-low resistivity, exactly opposite to
the training samples, it failed [shown as the blue solid line
in Fig. 11(a)]. The corresponding relative data misfit, shown
in Fig. 11(c), diverges at the beginning iterations, as mentioned
previously. However, it does not mean that SDM cannot deal
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
10
Fig. 10. Generalization ability demonstration: reconstructed four- or
five-layer models with training on the three-layer model set. (a)–(d) Four
different profiles.
with the latter pattern. Instead, we resample a training set with
the pattern of low resistivity-high resistivity-low resistivity,
train a new K based on this new model set, and apply it to
invert the measurements generated from the true model shown
in Fig. 11(a). We obtain a pretty accurate inversion shown
in Fig. 11(b).
In general, the SDM does not seem to be able to handle the
situation where the testing sample is completely different from
the training model set. However, the generalization ability
endows the SDM to interpolate new structures like different
number of layers that are not included in the training model
set. Therefore, although SDM has the generalization ability to
an extent, an accurate prior is essentially the key to achieve a
successful inversion.
C. Efficiency Comparison With Occam’s Inversion
The online prediction and inversion time of the SDM and
Occam’s inversion is listed in Table III. We can see that for the
same scenario, the SDM spends much less time to reconstruct
a continuous model than that of Occam’s inversion.
For SDM, the offline training stage takes most of the time,
but once the training is finished in advance, it would be much
faster, because no derivative computation is needed at all
during the online prediction stage with the utilization of the
learned descent directions. For Occam’s inversion, it may be
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
Fig. 11. Demonstration of the possible applicative boundary of the SDM.
(a) Failed inversion example when the prior is quite inaccurate or the testing
pattern is opposite to the training pattern. (b) Successful inversion for the
same measurements generated from true model in (a) with accurate prior.
(c) Diverged relative model misfit at the beginning iterations corresponding
to inverting model in (a).
TABLE III
T IME C OMPARISON B ETWEEN SDM AND O CCAM ’ S I NVERSION W ITH
R ESPECT TO T HREE - AND F IVE -L AYER C ONTINUOUS M ODELS
faster if we compute the Jacobian matrix using the adjoint
method, but it still is slower than directly retrieving the
descent directions from memory as how SDM does. The online
prediction time of the SDM shown in Table III corresponds to
the inversion result in Figs. 8(b) or 9(a) without updating the
descent direction Kupdate . However, we did monitor the time
of computing Kupdate , which is about 3 s when we set the
number of resampled models as 16. Therefore, the total time
of the SDM with updating Kupdate is still much less than that
of Occam’s inversion.
SDM performs much like how other machine learning-based
methods accelerate the inversion, i.e., to sacrifice the offline
time for online computational speed. It is more suitable
when the amount of data to be inverted is large, because
time-consuming training is done only once and then applied to
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
HU et al.: SUPERVISED DESCENT LEARNING TECHNIQUE
Fig. 12. Inversion of synthetic data with different noise levels. (a) Noise
level is level 1. (b) Noise level is level 2.
the whole data set. However, the traditional gradient-descent
method may outweigh SDM in view of time consumption
when there are only a few data to be inverted. However, we can
pretrain a series of Ks for basic structures and preserve them
for online prediction if we have a better understanding of the
generalization ability of the SDM, which will enhance the
competitiveness of the SDM even when the amount of data
is small.
D. Sensitivity Analysis
To validate the robustness of the SDM, we increased the
noise level of synthetic data during the prediction stage. The
attenuation and phase shift increased from (0.08 dB, 0.5◦ ) to
(0.12 dB, 0.7◦ ) (called level 1) and (0.25 dB, 1.5◦ ) (called
level 2), respectively, where the new noise levels are already
very strong in terms of logging measurements. Here, we uses
the measurements generated from the three-layer continuous
model described in the previous example and added the syn-
thetic measurements with noises in levels 1 and 2 to perform
the inversion. Fig. 12 shows the corresponding reconstructed
models, where Fig. 12(a) and (b) is in noise levels 1 and 2,
respectively. As shown in Fig. 12, clear boundaries can still be
distinguished in most of the regions even though the noise is
stronger. What is more important, the left-hand-side parts of
the upper boundaries are relatively well reconstructed. In brief,
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
11
the experiment demonstrates the robustness of the SDM even
when the noise is strong.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this article, we present an SDM to solve the LWD inverse
problems. The SDM achieves great flexibility to incorporate
prior information, capability of skipping local minima, as well
as acceleration to converge through combining the advantages
of the conventional methods leveraging the machine learning
scheme.
The SDM is divided into two stages: offline training and
online prediction. It iteratively learns a set of descent direc-
tions in the offline training process, where the training model
set is generated in advance according to the prior information.
During the online prediction stage, we adopt the same initial
model as that in the training stage and apply the learned
descent directions and data residuals directly to update the
models. The direct application of the learned descent directions
avoids the computation of derivatives in the online predic-
tion stage, which can accelerate the convergence. Meanwhile,
the adoption of data residuals can provide guidance from phys-
ical forward modeling, endowing SDM with the generalization
ability.
Numerical examples demonstrate that SDM-based inversion
can achieve higher resolution and faster convergence than
conventional Occam’s inversion.
R EFERENCES
[1] Q. Li, D. Omeragic, L. Chou, L. Yang, and K. Duong, “New directional
electromagnetic tool for proactive geosteering and accurate formation
evaluation while drilling,” in Proc. SPWLA, New Orleans, LA, USA,
2005, pp. 1–16.
[2] D. Li, D. R. Wilton, D. R. Jackson, H. Wang, and J. Chen, “Accelerated
computation of triaxial induction tool response for arbitrarily devi-
ated wells in planar-stratified transversely isotropic formations,” IEEE
Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 902–906, Jun. 2018.
[3] R. Beer et al., “Geosteering and/or reservoir characterization the prowess
of new-generation IWD tools,” in Proc. 51st Annu. Logging Symp., Perth,
WA, Australia, 2010, pp. 1–5.
[4] T. M. Habashy and A. Abubakar, “A general framework for constraint
minimization for the inversion of electromagnetic measurements,” Prog.
Electromagn. Res., vol. 46, pp. 265–312, 2004.
[5] O. Arikan, “Regularized inversion of a two-dimensional integral equa-
tion with applications in borehole induction measurements,” Radio Sci.,
vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 519–538, May 1994.
[6] F. J. Andre-I Nikolaevich Tikhonov and V. I.-A. Arsenin, Solutions Ill-
Posed Problems. Washington, DC, USA: Winston, 1977.
[7] K. Levenberg, “A method for the solution of certain non-linear problems
in least squares,” Quart. Appl. Math., vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 164–168,
Jul. 1944.
[8] D. W. Marquardt, “An algorithm for least-squares estimation of nonlinear
parameters,” J. Soc. Ind. Appl. Math., vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 431–441,
Jun. 1963,
[9] A. Abubakar, T. M. Habashy, M. Li, and J. Liu, “Inversion algorithms for
large-scale geophysical electromagnetic measurements,” Inverse Prob-
lems, vol. 25, no. 12, Dec. 2009, Art. no. 123012.
[10] B. A. Berg, Markov Chain Monte Carlo Simulations and Their Statistical
Analysis. Singapore: World Scientific, 2004.
[11] A. Tarantola, Inverse Problem Theory Methods for Model Parameter
Estimation. Philadelphia, PA, USA: Society for Industrial and Applied
Mathematics, 2005.
[12] Q. Shen, X. Wu, J. Chen, Z. Han, and Y. Huang, “Solving geosteer-
ing inverse problems by stochastic hybrid Monte Carlo method,”
J. Petroleum Sci. Eng., vol. 161, pp. 9–16, Feb. 2018.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
12
[13] Q. Shen, J. Chen, and H. Wang, “Data-driver interpretation of ultradeep
azimuthal propagation resistivity measurements: Transdimensional sto-
chastic inversion and uncertainty quantification,” Petrophysics SPWLA
J. Formation Eval. Reservoir Description, vol. 59, no. 6, pp. 786–798,
2018.
[14] H. Lu, Q. Shen, J. Chen, X. Wu, and X. Fu, “Parallel multiple-chain
DRAM MCMC for large-scale geosteering inversion and uncertainty
quantification,” J. Petroleum Sci. Eng., vol. 174, pp. 189–200, Mar. 2019.
[15] A. Lucas, M. Iliadis, R. Molina, and A. K. Katsaggelos, “Using deep
neural networks for inverse problems in imaging: Beyond analytical
methods,” IEEE Signal Process. Mag., vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 20–36,
Jan. 2018.
[16] I. Malkiel, M. Mrejen, A. Nagler, U. Arieli, L. Wolf, and H. Suchowski,
“Deep learning for the design of nano-photonic structures,” in Proc.
IEEE Int. Conf. Comput. Photography (ICCP), May 2018, pp. 1–14.
[17] Z. Wei and X. Chen, “Deep-learning schemes for full-wave nonlinear
inverse scattering problems,” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 57,
no. 4, pp. 1849–1860, Apr. 2019.
[18] J. Sun, Z. Niu, K. A. Innanen, J. Li, and D. O. Trad, “A theory-guided
deep learning formulation of seismic waveform inversion,” in Proc. SEG
Tech. Program Expanded Abstr., Aug. 2019, pp. 2343–2347.
[19] W. Wang, F. Yang, and J. Ma, “Velocity model building with a modified
fully convolutional network,” in Proc. SEG Tech. Program Expanded
Abstr., Aug. 2018, pp. 2086–2090,
[20] Y. Xu et al., “Borehole resistivity measurement modeling using machine-
learning techniques,” Petrophysics, vol. 59, no. 06, pp. 778–785, 2018.
[21] W. Lewis and D. Vigh, “Deep learning prior models from seismic images
for full-waveform inversion,” in Proc. SEG Tech. Program Expanded
Abstracts, 2017, pp. 1512–1517.
[22] J. Adler and O. Öktem, “Solving ill-posed inverse problems using
iterative deep neural networks,” Inverse Problems, vol. 33, no. 12,
Dec. 2017, Art. no. 124007.
[23] L. Huang, M. Polanco, and T. E. Clee, “Initial experiments on improving
seismic data inversion with deep learning,” in Proc. New York Sci. Data
Summit (NYSDS), Aug. 2018, pp. 1–3.
[24] Z. Wei, D. Liu, and X. Chen, “Dominant-current deep learning scheme
for electrical impedance tomography,” IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng.,
vol. 66, no. 9, pp. 2546–2555, Sep. 2019.
[25] Z. Wei and X. Chen, “Physics-inspired convolutional neural network for
solving full-wave inverse scattering problems,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propag., vol. 67, no. 9, pp. 6138–6148, Sep. 2019.
[26] R. Zhang, Y. Liu, and H. Sun, “Physics-guided convolutional
neural network (PhyCNN) for data-driven seismic response model-
ing,” 2019, arXiv:1909.08118. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/
1909.08118
[27] Y. Jin, X. Wu, J. Chen, and Y. Huang, “Using a physics-driven deep
neural network to solve inverse problems for lwd azimuthal resistivity
measurements,” in Proc. SPWLA. The Woodlands, Texas, USA, 2019,
p. 13.
[28] A. Johnston, R. Garg, G. Carneiro, I. Reid, and A. van den Hengel,
“Scaling CNNs for high resolution volumetric reconstruction from
a single image,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Comput. Vis. Workshops
(ICCVW), Oct. 2017, pp. 930–939.
[29] X. Xiong and F. De la Torre, “Supervised descent method and its
applications to face alignment,” in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis.
Pattern Recognit., Jun. 2013, pp. 532–539.
[30] R. Guo, M. Li, G. Fang, F. Yang, S. Xu, and A. Abubakar, “Appli-
cation of supervised descent method to transient electromagnetic data
inversion,” Geophysics, vol. 84, no. 4, pp. E225–E237, Jul. 2019.
[31] R. Guo, M. Li, F. Yang, S. Xu, and A. Abubakar, “First arrival
traveltime tomography using supervised descent learning technique,”
Inverse Problems, vol. 35, no. 10, Oct. 2019, Art. no. 105008.
[32] M. S. Bittar, “Electromagnetic wave resistivity tool having a tilted
antenna for geosteering within a desired payzone,” U.S. Patent 6 476 609,
Nov. 5, 2002.
[33] D. Omeragic et al., “Sensitivities of directional electromagnetic mea-
surements for well placement and formation evaluation while drilling,”
in Proc. SEG Tech. Program Expanded Abstr., Jan. 2006, pp. 1630–1634.
[34] S. Li, J. Chen, and T. L. J. Binford, “Using new lwd measurements
to evaluate formation resistivity anisotropy at any dip angle,” in Proc.
SPWLA. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2014, p. 16.
[35] J. Seydoux et al., “Full 3d deep directional resistivity measurements
optimize well placement and provide reservoir-scale imaging while
drilling,” in Proc. SPWLA. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2014,
p. 14.
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
[36] U. Ezioba and J.-M. Denichou, “Mapping-While-Drilling system
improves well placement and field development,” J. Petroleum Technol.,
vol. 66, no. 8, pp. 32–35, Aug. 2014.
[37] H. Wang, Q. Shen, and J. Chen, “Sensitivity study and uncertainty
quantification of azimuthal propagation resistivity measurements,” in
Proc. SPWLA, London, U.K, 2018, p. 15.
[38] H.-H. Wu, C. Golla, T. Parker, N. Clegg, and L. Monteilhet, “A new
ultra-deep azimuthal electromagnetic lwd sensor for reservoir insight,”
in Proc. SPWLA. London, U.K., 2018, p. 14.
[39] P. F. Rodney and M. M. Wisler, “Electromagnetic wave resistivity MWD
tool,” SPE Drilling Eng., vol. 1, no. 5, pp. 337–346, Oct. 1986.
[40] S. C. Constable, R. L. Parker, and C. G. Constable, “Occam’s inversion:
A practical algorithm for generating smooth models from electro-
magnetic sounding data,” Geophysics, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 289–300,
Mar. 1987,
[41] L. Zhong, J. Li, A. Bhardwaj, L. Shen, and R. Liu, “Computation of
triaxial induction logging tools in layered anisotropic dipping forma-
tions,” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 1148–1163,
May 2008.
Yanyan Hu received the B.S. degree in electronic
engineering and the M.S. degree in signal and infor-
mation processing from Xidian University, Xi’an,
China, in 2015 and 2018, respectively. She is pur-
suing the Ph.D. degree with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
Her research interests include scientific machine
learning and deep learning for forward and inverse
modeling.
Rui Guo received the B.S. degree in telecommunica-
tion engineering from the Beijing University of Posts
and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 2014,
and the M.S. degree in electronic engineering from
the Institute of Electronics (IECAS), Chinese Acad-
emy of Sciences, Beijing, in 2017. He is pursuing
the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering with
Tsinghua University, Beijing.
Since 2017, he has been a Research Student with
the Beijing National Research Center for Informa-
tion Science and Technology, Tsinghua University.
He was a Summer Intern in software engineering with the Beijing Geoscience
Center (BGC), Schlumberger, Beijing, in 2018, and an Intern in data science
with the Schlumberger Digital Foundation Center (SDFC), Houston, TX,
USA, in 2019. His thesis research is on the theory and algorithms of machine-
learning-based inversion especially in magnetotellurics (MT), microwave
imaging, and seismic tomography.
Mr. Guo received the Outstanding Graduates Award from IECAS
in 2017 and the Best Student Paper Award at the PhotonIcs and Electro-
magnetics Research Symposium (PIERS) in 2019.
Yuchen Jin received the B.S. degree in electronic
information from the Huazhong University of Sci-
ence and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2017. He is
pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Univer-
sity of Houston, Houston, TX, USA, co-advised by
Dr. Jiefu Chen and Dr. Xuqing Wu.
His research interests include machine learning,
inverse problem, optimization, seismic processing,
and signal processing.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
HU et al.: SUPERVISED DESCENT LEARNING TECHNIQUE
Xuqing Wu received the Ph.D. degree in computer
science from the University of Houston, Houston,
TX, USA, in 2011.
In 2015, he was a Data Scientist and Software
Engineer of Energy and IT industry. He is an
Assistant Professor of computer information sys-
tems with the College of Technology, University
of Houston. His research interests include scien-
tific machine learning, probabilistic modeling, and
subsurface sensing.
Maokun Li received the B.S. degree in electronic
engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China, in 2002, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
in electrical engineering from the University of Illi-
nois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA,
in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
After graduation, he worked as a Senior Research
Scientist at Schlumberger-Doll Research, Cam-
bridge, MA, USA. In 2014, he joined the
Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua
University. He has published one book chapter,
50 journal articles, 120 conference proceedings, and 3 patent applications.
His research interests include fast algorithms in computational electromagnet-
ics and their applications in antenna modeling, electromagnetic compatibility
analysis, and inverse problems.
Dr. Li was also among the recipients of the China National 1000 Plan
in 2014 and the 2017 IEEE Ulrich L. Rohde Innovative Conference Paper
Award. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE J OURNAL
ON M ULTISCALE AND M ULTIPHYSICS C OMPUTATIONAL T ECHNIQUES and
Applied Computational Electromagnetic Society Journal and a Guest Editor
for the Special Issue on Electromagnetic Inverse Problems for Sensing and
Imaging in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Houston. Downloaded on June 03,2020 at 09:45:03 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
13
Aria Abubakar was born in Bandung, Indonesia,
in August 21, 1974. He received the M.Sc. degree
(cum laude) in electrical engineering and the Ph.D.
degree (cum laude) in technical sciences from the
Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Nether-
lands, in 1997 and 2000, respectively.
In 1996, he was a Research Student with
Shell Research B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
He was a Summer Intern with Schlumberger-Doll
Research, Ridgefield, CT, USA, in 1999. From
September 2000 to February 2003, he was with
the Laboratory of Electromagnetic Research and Section of Applied Geo-
physics, Delft University of Technology. He is a Head of Data Science and
Scientific Advisor with Schlumberger. His main research activity includes
solving forward and inverse problems in acoustics, electromagnetics, and
elastodynamics.
Dr. Abubakar received the Best 1997 Master’s Thesis Award in electrical
engineering from the Delft University of Technology.
Jiefu Chen (Member, IEEE) received the B.S.
degree in engineering mechanics and the M.S.
degree in dynamics and control from the Dalian Uni-
versity of Technology, Dalian, China, in 2003 and
2006, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Duke University, Durham, NC,
USA, in 2010.
From 2011 to 2015, he was a Staff Scientist with
the Advantage Research and Development Center,
Weatherford International Ltd., Houston, TX, USA.
Since September 2015, he has been an Assistant
Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Houston, Houston. His research interests include computational
electromagnetics, inverse problems, machine learning for scientific computing,
oilfield data analytics, seismic data processing, underground and underwater
wireless communication, and well logging.