Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224

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Journal of Applied Geophysics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jappgeo

Efficient 2D inversion of long ERT sections

Panagiotis Tsourlos a, Nikos Papadopoulos b,⁎, Costas Papazachos a, Myeong-Jong Yi c, Jung-Ho Kim c
a
Department of Geophysics, School of Geology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
b
Laboratory of Geophysical-Satellite Remote Sensing and Archaeo-Environment, Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Foundation of Research and Technology,
Hellas (F.O.R.T.H.), P.O. Box 119, Rethymno 74 100, Crete, Greece
c
Korean Institute of Geosciences and Mineral Resources (KIGAM), Mineral Resources Research Division, Department of Exploration Geophysics and Mining Engineering, 124 Gwahang-no,
Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this work a new algorithm for the efficient and fast two dimensional (2D) inversion of long electrical resistivity
Received 19 July 2013 tomography (ERT) sections is introduced. The algorithm is based on 2.5D finite element method (FEM) scheme to
Accepted 26 March 2014 solve Poisson's equation that describes the current flow into the earth's subsurface. The adjoint equation tech-
Available online 5 April 2014
nique was incorporated into the FEM framework to estimate the sensitivity values. The reconstructed 2D resis-
tivity models are recovered through an iterative, non-linear smoothness constrained least-squares approach.
Keywords:
Fast 2D inversion
The algorithm further incorporates an experimental procedure to avoid the calculation and storage of the entire
Jacobian matrix Jacobian matrix. The basic concept of this new algorithm relies on the fact that for every measurement there is a
Least-squares number of model parameters which are located in parts of the 2-D model at distant locations from potential and
LSQR current electrodes. The corresponding absolute Jacobian matrix values in such cases are very small (almost zero)
and can be omitted by the Jacobian calculation. Around every measurement a fixed rectangular threshold region
is defined a-priori based on geometrical criteria. The algorithm calculates only Jacobian matrix values for the
model parameters that are included in this threshold area omitting the calculation of the Jacobian entries related
to model parameters outside this region. This approach speeds up the Jacobian matrix calculations while the
efficient storage of the sparse Jacobian and Smoothness matrices and the inversion using an iterative routine
like LSQR method increase significantly the inversion speed and reduce the memory requirements. The new
algorithm is almost more than one order of magnitude (~30 times) faster and consumes one order of magnitude
(~90%) less storage memory than the original one based on full Jacobian calculations for typical applications. The
application of the new algorithm to synthetic and real data sets shows that the reconstructed models exhibit
comparable accuracy to the standard inversion approach.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction presented a “roll-along inversion” methodology by splitting up the

The electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) technique is increasingly
used to solve a variety of engineering, environmental, hydrogeological,
geological and archeological problems (Loke et al., 2013). The advent
of automated multichannel resistivity meters has given the ability to
perform ERT surveys in a limited time hence increasing the productivity
in field practice. Further, the combination of multichannel systems with
towed arrays for either land or marine applications has led to unprece-
dented survey speeds and amounts of collected data. To efficiently cope
with these long ERT lines, processing techniques which use one dimen-
sional (1D) inversion approaches combined with lateral constrains have
been proposed (Auken et al., 2005). However in cases of complicated
subsurface structure, processing with full two dimensional (2D) inver-
sion algorithms is still required. To this direction Günther (2007)
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: nikos@ims.forth.gr (N. Papadopoulos).
long ERT data into overlapping segments, which are subsequently treated
in inversion by using sophisticated spatial constraints to account for the
limited resolution in the boundaries of the separate models.
Despite the increasing CPU and memory computer resources, stan-
dard 2D ERT inversion algorithms are still generally inefficient for deal-
ing with very large measured data-sets as the calculation, storage and
inversion of the corresponding large Jacobian matrix render its usage
impractical. To partly alleviate this problem the use of Quasi-Newton
techniques for approximately calculating (updating) the Jacobian ma-
trix, rather than fully calculating it, has been proposed in literature
(Loke and Barker, 1996). These techniques are known to increase inver-
sion speed yet they are less accurate when resistivity contrasts are high
and further they do not reduce the memory storage space of the Jacobian
matrix.
In the present work, a standard 2D ERT smoothness constrained in-
version algorithm (Tsourlos, 1995) was modified to perform efficient
inversion of long ERT lines. The specific algorithm is based on the simple
concept that in the case of long lines the majority of the Jacobian matrix

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jappgeo.2014.03.022
0926-9851/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
214 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224
entries, which correspond to each measurement, are effectively zero.
This observation reflects the fact that most of the parameters are
spatially far away from the measurement that they practically do not
affect it.
The proposed algorithm automatically identifies very small Jacobian
matrix entries based on a-priori geometric criteria. These entries are re-
lated to distant model parameters in relation to a specific measurement
and they are not included within specific threshold dimensions. Subse-
quently the algorithm excludes these entries from the sensitivity
matrix calculation thus, saving time and memory resources. More-
over, to take advantage of the sparseness of the resulting Jacobian
matrix, inversion is performed using the LSQR (least squares regres-
sion) method, which results in faster calculation time and has limit-
ed memory requirements.
It is noted that the main idea behind this work is the same with
what Papadopoulos et al. (2011) followed for the three dimensional
(3D) resistivity problem, but the actual implementation is rather
different. In our case part of the Jacobian matrix is never calculated
since it is excluded in advance on the basis of predefined geometri-
cal criteria. Conversely, for the 3D case, Papadopoulos et al. (2011)
applied a specific scheme to calculate a variable masking region of
the significant sensitivity area based on the calculation of the entire
Jacobian matrix prior to the inversion procedure. Such an approach
was also followed by Günther et al. (2006) who calculated the entire
sensitivity matrix and subsequently stored only the values that
exceed a specific predefined threshold value in order to save PC
memory.
In this work the particular algorithm is presented in detail and the re-
sults are compared to a standard 2D inversion scheme for the case of
synthetic data deriving from various models and different geoelectrical
arrays. The algorithm is evaluated with respect to the quality of the
inversion results and its efficiency in computing speed and resources.
Finally its application is also demonstrated with field data.
2. Direct current resistivity inversion
In this work the forward resistivity calculations were performed
using a proven 2.5D finite element method (FEM) algorithm (Tsourlos,
1995). A 2.5D model suggests that the source is considered to be 3-D
but the subsurface resistivity is only 2-D. The technique has been exten-
sively described in many works (Coggon, 1971; Rijo, 1977) so no further
description of the modeling method is presented here.
The DC linearized inverse problem can be expressed as
dy ¼ J dx;
where dy = y − F(x) is the vector of differences between observed
(y) and calculated data (logarithm of apparent resistivities, F(x)), dx is
the correction vector to the initial model parameters x0 and J is the
Jacobian matrix for the x parameter (logarithm of resistivity) distribu-
tion. The Jacobian matrix links the variation of the apparent resistivity
data (ραi) with the change of model subsurface resistivity (ρj). The
adjoint equation technique was incorporated into the FEM framework
to estimate the values of the Jacobian matrix (McGillivray and
Oldenburg, 1990). A common approach for the model parameteriza-
tion is to divide the earth into rectangular blocks of unknown constant
resistivity, with cell dimensions (X, Z) closely related to the minimum
electrode spacing, (a), [e.g. (X, Z) = (a, a/2)].
Since the geoelectrical inverse problem is ill-conditioned, unstable
and non-unique (Tikhonov et al., 1998), it is necessary to impose addi-
tional constraints on Eq. (1) in order to obtain reliable results. A typical
approach, also adopted here, is to incorporate additional smoothness
constraints on the model in Eq. (1) in the form:
r ¼ C dx ¼ 0
where C is a second difference smoothness operator (Sasaki, 1992).
Simultaneous solution of Eqs. (1) and (2) is usually performed by min-
imization of the objective function:
2 2
U ¼ kdy−Jdxk þ λkrk ; ð3Þ
where || . || denotes the Euclidean norm and λ is a Lagrange multiplier.
Minimization of Eq. (3) leads to the following set of modified normal
equations:


T T T
J J þ λC C dx ¼ J dy: ð4Þ
The solution to the Eq. (4) is equivalent to the least-squares solution
of the joint system of Eqs. (2) and (3), i.e. (Sasaki, 1992):
   
pffiffiffiJffi dx ¼
dy
: ð5Þ
λ C 0
We use Eq. (5) to obtain the correction vector dx. Solving directly
Eq. (5) avoids the calculation of the JTJ and CTC matrices, as well as the
matrix inversion involved in Eq. (4). The vector dx is added to the initial
vector x0 to obtain the updated resistivity parameters. Furthermore, the
use of an appropriate method on Eq. (5) (e.g. conjugate gradients) can
accelerate the inversion procedure and possibly save computer memo-
ry. The procedure is repeated until the misfit between the measured and
modeled data is reduced to an acceptable relative root mean square
(RMS) level or a maximum number of the iterations has been reached.
The maximum number of iterations for the synthetic and field data in
this work was set equal to 7. The quality of the collected data dictates
the choice of the RMS threshold and corresponds to an estimation (or
calculation) of the apparent resistivity data measured error. The La-
grange multiplier weights the model constraints against the data misfit.
The starting value of Lagrange multiplier was set to 0.1 for all the tested
models and real data. This value was halved in the later iterations and
remained constant after the 5th inversion iteration.
3. Algorithm description
The basic concept of the present work relies on the fact that for every
surface measurement there is a number of model parameters for which
their absolute Jacobian values are very small and they can be regarded
as almost equal to zero. These parameters are typically expected for
parts of the 2D model space at distant locations from potential and cur-
rent electrodes. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that any larger or small-
ð1Þ er resistivity change of these parameters will not contribute any
additional useful information in the specific measurement. This can be
actually illustrated in the example of Fig. 1 for the sensitivity distribu-
tion of a specific surface dipole–dipole measurement with dipole spac-
ing 1a and separation between current and potential dipoles Nsep =
4a, from which it is clear that there are regions for which the calculated
Jacobian matrix entries are practically zero (Fig. 1—bottom). In practice
these parameters cannot be resolved from this measurement, as it does
not carry the necessary information content to reconstruct these far
distant model parameters. In practice the existence of any resistivity
inhomogeneity in this distant model parameter will not affect the mea-
sured resistivity value, as demonstrated by Papadopoulos et al. (2011)
in a similar case for the 3D resistivity problem.
The problem now becomes how to define the corresponding impor-
tant sensitivity region for each different measurement i.e. the model
parameters for which the Jacobian matrix entries can be considered
as significant for the inversion procedure and which needs to be calcu-
lated. In the present work we defined this area experimentally, using
specific geometric criteria based on the relative position and distance
of each apparent resistivity measurement with respect to all model pa-
rameters that describe the subsurface resistivity variation. To this direc-
ð2Þ tion, several sensitivity patterns of various standard arrays in
 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224 215

Fig. 1. 2D sensitivity distribution of a surface dipole–dipole configuration with Nsep = 4a, where a is the minimum dipole spacing (top). Graph of the respective sensitivity values plotted in
increasing order (bottom). The region of minimal sensitivity corresponds to the far distant model parameters with respect to the location of the electrodes that are used to collect the
apparent resistivity data.

combination to different resistivity distributions were observed to
obtain safe conclusions.
Assuming that the distance between the external electrodes of
one particular measurement obtained with a standard electrode array
(e.g. Dipole–Dipole, Pole–Dipole, Pole–Pole, Wenner, Schlumberger,
Gradient, etc.) with typical geometry (inter-electrode spacing a and
Nsep = 1a, 2a…,Nmax a) is d, then we define a rectangular threshold
region around the specific measurement (Fig. 2) with dimensions t.d
along the X axis and t.d/2 along the Y axis. The floating parameter t
controls the horizontal and vertical extend of this rectangular region.
A smaller high-sensitivity region is defined when assigning small values
to the parameter t, which will finally lead in the actual calculation of
fewer entries for the Jacobian matrix. Assigning a large positive value
to parameter t (e.g. 106) actually leads to the standard inversion
approach where the complete Jacobian matrix is calculated.
The implementation of the above concept in the inversion algorithm
is rather simple and straightforward. In the beginning of the inversion
processing procedure a specific value is assigned to the parameter t.
Then, during the Jacobian calculation within the inversion program
the distance d of the external electrodes of every measurement is calcu-
lated through their relative coordinates along the survey line and the
rectangular threshold region is defined for each specific measurement.
Row entries of the Jacobian matrix associated with every measurement
are calculated only for those parameters which fall within the dimen-
sions of this rectangular threshold region, while for parameters outside
this area the Jacobian entry is neither calculated nor stored.
The above strategy during the Jacobian calculation will finally result
in obtaining a sparse sensitivity matrix. Moreover, the smoothness ma-
trix that describes the relation of each parameter with its immediate
neighbors is also sparse by its definition. Thus, the augmented matrix
in the left hand side of Eq. (5) will be eventually large and sparse. In
order to reduce the total memory requirements, only the non-zero
elements of this augmented matrix are efficiently stored as vectors
(Papadopoulos et al., 2011). Furthermore, iterative matrix solvers like

Fig. 2. Sensitivity distribution of a dipole–dipole measurement with Nsep = 3a, where a is the minimum dipole spacing. The area inside the red rectangular depicts the orthogonal threshold
region defined for this measurement, for which the Jacobian matrix entries will be calculated.
216 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224
 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224
LSQR (Paige and Saunders, 1982) can take advantage of the sparseness
of such matrices for the solution of the joint system of Eq. (5) and the
updating of the model resistivity during the different iterations.
LSQR is based on the Golub–Kahan bidiagonalization (Golub and
Kahan, 1965) and it is a generalized conjugate gradient (CG) method
that operates directly on the augmented matrix of Eq. (5). LSQR reduces
monotonically the linear misfit (quantitative measure of the quality of
the updated solution) during its iterations and approximates the solu-
tion of over determined and under determined linear systems of the
form Ax = b in an iterative manner. LSQR involves only a few multipli-
cations of the augmented matrix of Eq. (5) with vectors, hence the
whole process can significantly speed up by taking advantage of any
matrix sparseness in these multiplications, such as the case of the
 
J lated and stored depends on the number of electrodes that are used
matrix A ¼ pffiffiffiffi .
λ C
It is very important to set up suitable terminating criteria for the
LSQR due to its iterative nature. A comprehensive discussion on this
subject is provided for the 3D resistivity inversion problem by
Papadopoulos et al. (2011) and a similar strategy was followed in the
case of the 2D inversion algorithm. The convergence of the LSQR de-
pends on the singularity of the Jacobian matrix and the relative error
in the data. In general, there is not an objective criterion to determine
the optimum LSQR termination step, as this depends on the degree of
the linearity of the problem. As a rule of thumb it is recommended to
stop the LSQR steps when the linear misfit does not show significant
changes. This approach may result in a larger number of non-linear
iterations of the whole inverse problem, but allows the determination
of robust, physically meaningful resistivity solutions.
3.1. Deciding the threshold value
An important issue concerning the new algorithm refers to the choice
of the optimum value for the parameter t, which controls which part of
the model Jacobian matrix values will be actually calculated and subse-
quently stored. An empirical approach was followed, that did not employ
any kind of an optimization workflow. This was accomplished by testing
a number of different values of t with a variety of simple and more com-
plicated resistivity models and electrode configurations.
An indicative example is illustrated in Fig. 3 where we present the
resistivity distribution of the original model that was constructed to
simulate a resistive (1000 Ω-m) and a conductive (5 Ω-m) prism with
similar dimensions (10 × 5 m) buried in a 12 meter thick layer
(100 Ω-m). A more conductive layer (10 Ω-m) is located below
the depth of 12 m. A long ERT line was simulated assuming the
Dipole–Dipole array with a = 5 meter inter electrode spacing and
maximum Nsep = 8a. The 2.5D forward FEM algorithm was used to
generate the 588 noise free synthetic data for the particular model
and survey parameters. The synthetic data were inverted with the 2D
inversion algorithm using different values for the parameter t. The
model space was divided in a total number of 584 parameters. The in-
version model where the complete Jacobian matrix is calculated within
the inverse procedure (t = 106) is also shown for comparison.
The final inversion models after seven iterations exhibit low RMS
errors (less than 0.2%). The proposed and the original algorithms result-
ed in 2D inversion models of comparable accuracy. More specifically
these inversion models exhibit a mean relative difference of less than
2.8% (in cases where t N 1.5). Even in the extreme case of calculating
only the 7% of the entire Jacobian matrix elements, the algorithm man-
aged to converge to an inversion model that is a very good representa-
tion of the original model. These results clearly show that the definition
of a relatively small threshold region (by assigning a very small value to
Fig. 3. Original model (top) that was used to generate the synthetic apparent resistivity data for a long ERT line with 80 electrodes using the Dipole–Dipole array. The results from the data
processing with the 2D resistivity inversion algorithm are shown for different values of the parameter t that control the dimensions of the threshold region that is used to calculate only the
significant part of the Jacobian matrix. The percentage of the complete Jacobian (Jac) that was calculated is also shown for each case.
217
the parameter t) can result in stable and successful inversions. However
given that the spatial sensitivity pattern may significantly change with
inhomogeneity, it was decided to finally adopt the value t = 2 as the
standard parameter to determine the dimensions of the threshold re-
gion for each different measurement. This choice is relatively conserva-
tive, but minimizes the possibility of removing significant information
from the Jacobian matrix during the later iterations of the inversion
procedure.
3.2. Efficiency in computational resources
Adopting a constant value for parameter t (t = 2) means that the
actual percentage of the Jacobian matrix values that will be finally calcu-
along the ERT line, the total number of the apparent resistivity data
that will be captured and the number of model blocks that will be
used to discretize the subsurface. As we show in Fig. 4a the percentage
of the Jacobian matrix which is actually important and needs to be
updated and stored within the inversion procedure decreases exponen-
tially with the number of electrodes and the number of measurements.
At the same time the efficient storage of only the non-zero elements of
the sparse Jacobian and smoothness matrices in vectors can reduce the
memory requirements up to 96%, since the computer needs up to 30
times less storage memory for these matrices (see Fig. 4b). In order
to demonstrate the memory efficiency of the new algorithm, a dipole–
dipole ERT survey over a line of 100 electrodes is considered, assuming
measurements with maximum dipole separation up to 6. The resulting
580 measurements and 550 model parameters (unknown resistivities)
with the new scheme involve the calculation of only 10% of the full
Jacobian and requires just 15% of the storage memory (0.38 MB)
compared to storing the full Jacobian (approximately 2.5 MB).
Furthermore the calculation of only the Jacobian matrix values for
parameters included in the threshold rectangular region of each mea-
surement results in a dramatic decrease (typically more than 90%) in
the time needed to perform the sparse Jacobian matrix calculation
(see Fig. 5a). Similar accelerations are also obtained by the use of the
LSQR routine in the augmented matrix inversion (see Fig. 5b).
Fig. 6 illustrates the total time that it is consumed by the new and the
original algorithm to complete seven non-linear iterations for different
data sets with increasing number of electrodes and measurements.
The tests were performed on a PC with Intel Core i5 CPU and 8 GB
RAM. It is obvious that in terms of overall speed the new algorithm is
more than one order of magnitude (~30 times) faster than the original
one especially in relatively large inversion problems.
4. Algorithm evaluation with synthetic data
Several tests were performed with synthetic data generated from
various resistivity models to evaluate the efficiency of the new
algorithm. Fig. 7(a) depicts a typical resistivity model representing a
common geological setting, namely a fault with a vertical depression
of a resistive layer with resistivity 500 Ω-m with respect to an overlain
conductive layer with resistivity 30 Ω-m. A local resistivity inhomogene-
ity (1000 Ω-m) is attributed to the block with X = 165–180 m and Z =
7.5–12.5 m. A relatively long ERT section with a typical configuration
(inter line spacing a = 5 m, 50 electrodes) perpendicular to the fault
was considered. The Dipole–Dipole array with a maximum Nsep = 8a
was used, resulting in 348 measurements. The forward response for
this specific resistivity distribution and survey parameters was calculat-
ed with the 2.5D FEM modeling algorithm. Realistic data errors were
simulated by adding 3% Gaussian noise prior to their inversion. The re-
constructed 2D resistivity models are presented in Fig. 7(b,c) for the
218 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224

Fig. 4. Relation between the number of electrodes and measurements of a long ERT line as a function of the actual percentage of the Jacobian matrix elements that are calculated and stored
with the new algorithm (for a value of t = 2). The dashed line corresponds to the best-fit power law in the chart. The memory requirements (in Mb) for the original and the new algorithm
inversion matrix storage are presented in the bottom image. The relative decrease (bold numbers) of the memory requirements for the new algorithm due to the efficient storage of the
non-zero elements of the augmented matrix is also shown.

original and the new algorithm respectively. Both algorithms converged
to a final solution after 7 iterations with practically similar RMS (~1.5–
1.6%) recovering the main characteristics of the original model. The in-
version models resulted by the original and the new algorithm are visu-
ally identical and they exhibit a mean relative difference of 0.5%. Fig. 7d
shows that the distribution of the relative differences between the
inverted resistivity models resulted by the original and new algorithm
lies within the range of +/−1.5%.
The second test deals with a rather more complicated and demand-
ing situation, where a 10 Ω-m conductive superficial layer with thick-
ness 5 m is overlain by a 100 Ω-m resistive half-space layer (Fig. 8a).
Two small high resistive bodies (500 Ω-m) indicate local inhomogenei-
ties close to the ground surface. The left prism is totally embedded in the
first conductive layer, while the right body is situated in the contact be-
tween the two main layers. A diagonal conductive dyke (10 Ω-m) at the
center of the section divides the bottom layer into two main parts. Sim-
ilar survey parameters as in the case of the first model were used to gen-
erate the synthetic data (Dipole–Dipole array, 50 electrodes, a = 5 m,
Nsep = 8a, 3% Gaussian noise). Once again the new algorithm recon-
structs the original model with great accuracy and similar RMS error
with respect to the original algorithm (Fig. 8b,c). The inversion models
resulted by the original and the new algorithm are visually identical
and they exhibit a mean relative difference of 1.2%. Fig. 8d shows that
the distribution of the relative differences between the inverted resistiv-
ity models resulted by the original and new algorithm lies within the
range of +/− 5%. The results from this synthetic example verify that
the proposed algorithm can produce reliable geoelectrical models,
even in cases of demanding and complicated geological structures, with-
out information loss with respect to the standard ERT tomographic
approach.
The third synthetic example (Fig. 9a) represents a typical scenario of
recent valley deposits composed of different stratigraphy units. The
blocks with very low resistivity values (10 Ω-m) simulate a clay horizon
below the depth of 4.5 m and a very-fine material that fills a superficial
ditch (horizontal distance 11–24 m). A sandy–clayey layer with resistiv-
ity 100 Ω-m (horizontal distance 31–95 m) is formulated from the sur-
face up to the depth of 1.5 m. The blocks with the higher resistivity value
(200 Ω-m) show lenses of a coarser material (gravels and sand) that
have been deposited within the silty–clayey horizon (resistivity 50 Ω-
m).
The forward response of the specific model was calculated assuming a
layout of 96 equally spaced electrodes (a = 1 m) along the line. The sim-
ulated apparent resistivity data corresponding to Wenner–Schlumberger
(WS), Pole–Dipole (PD) and Dipole–Dipole (DD) array configurations,
 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224
Fig. 5. Computation time of the new algorithm for the calculation of the sparse Jacobian matrix (up) and the inversion of the sparse augmented matrix with LSQR (down), with respect to
the original algorithm for one non-linear inversion iteration.
with multiple combinations of electrode spacing and N separations (1a,
2a, 3a, Nsep = 10a) were extracted and corrupted with 3% Gaussian
noise. The WS, PD and DD data sets contained 2160, 2490 and 2430 mea-
surements respectively.
The WS, PD and DD were inverted with the original and the new algo-
rithm and the corresponding resistivity inversion sections are shown in
Fig. 9(b1–b2; c1–c2; d1–d2). The new algorithm omitted the calculation
of 55%, 75% and 70% of the Jacobian matrix elements during the inversion
of the WS, PD and DD data respectively. The inversion models resulted by
the original and the new algorithm look practically identical for all the
three arrays. This is also verified by inspecting the mean relative differ-
ences: Fig. 9(b3,c3,d3) shows that the distribution of the relative differ-
ences between the inverted resistivity models resulted from the original
and new algorithm for all the arrays lie within the range of +/−3.5%.
5. Application of the algorithm to field data
The presented algorithm was also tested with real data, which were
obtained in the framework of a 2-D geoelectrical survey that was carried
219
out at the embankment of the west bank of river Elba at the area of
Havelberg (Sachen Anhalt), Germany (Fig. 10a). The geological forma-
tions in the region consist of sands, mixture of sand and clays and lenses
of shale. The target of the geophysical survey was to provide information
regarding the subsurface structure of the embankment and in particular
to identify lithological variations (i.e. shale lenses) possibly associated
with structural vulnerability zones (Sotiropoulos et al., 2002).
The presented algorithm was applied to a long 2D ERT line (total
length of 1500 m) which was situated on the top of the embankment
(Fig. 10b). Data were obtained using a dipole–dipole array in a roll-
along mode with inter-electrode spacing of a = 5 m and a maximum
Nsep = 6a. Inversion results using both the standard and the proposed
algorithm are depicted in Fig. 11. The resulting models show a top
more resistive layer representing unsaturated sand, which is followed
by a lower resistivity formation representing the transition between
areas of almost pure sand (higher resistivities) and sand with higher
clay content (lower resistivities).
Overall for both applications convergence was obtained after 6 iter-
ations reaching similar %RMS errors (3.6% for the standard and 3.7% for
220 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224

Fig. 6. Comparison of the total processing time of the original and new algorithm for seven non-linear inversion iterations, for different numbers of measurements and electrodes. Bold
numbers indicate the acceleration factor of the new algorithm with respect to the original one.

Fig. 7. Model 1 — Fault: (a) Original resistivity model. Inverted 2D resistivity sections resulted by the data processing with the original (b) and the proposed (c) inversion algorithm. A long ERT
dipole–dipole array was simulated with 50 electrodes, a = 5 m and Nsep = 8a. (d) Relative difference between the inversion models resulted by the standard and the new algorithm.
 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224 221

Fig. 8. Model 2 — Dyke: (a) Original resistivity model. b) Inverted 2D resistivity sections resulted by the data processing with the original (b) and the new (c) inversion algorithm (the
configuration is the same as in Fig. 7). (d) Relative difference between the inversion models resulted by the standard and the new algorithm.

the new algorithm). At the same time the data processing time with the
new algorithm was approximately 40% of the time required by the
standard 2D inversion approach. The corresponding inversion results
obtained from both techniques are very similar; with the mean relative
difference between the two inversion models (standard and new) being
below 1.6%. By inspecting the relative differences between the inverted
results (Fig. 11c) it can be noticed that the maximum differences are
concentrated at the bottom parameter layers of the inversion area.
This can be explained by considering that these layers suffer from low
resolution and thus the data errors can “contaminate” more the bottom
part of the model. As the very low (almost zero) entries of the Jacobian
matrix are zeroed by the “fast” algorithm this “contamination” is now
changed resulting into differences which are localized at the bottom
layer parameters.
6. Discussion and conclusions
In this work a new algorithm for the efficient and fast 2D inversion of
long ERT lines is proposed. Its main concept relies on the assumption
that far distant model parameters with respect to the current and
potential electrodes in long ERT sections do not essentially influence
the behavior of this specific measurement. The algorithm incorporates
an empirical procedure verified by testing to avoid calculation and stor-
age of the entire Jacobian matrix. Only the larger absolute Jacobian
values that correspond to the parameters which are included in a
threshold orthogonal area around each resistivity measurement are cal-
culated. The definition of the rectangular region is performed empirical-
ly based on the maximum distance (d) of the outer electrodes that
participate in obtaining each particular measurement with any kind
of configuration. The threshold area is defined as a multiple (t) of
this outer electrode distance (d) by using a simple formula of the form
[t d x t/2 d], where the parameter t controls the actual region dimensions
in the X and Z directions.
An optimum value for t was defined through a number of tests with
different electrode arrays and synthetic models simulating diverse
geological conditions and the value t = 2 is finally recommended.
Although this choice seems to be relatively conservative, it is derived
from the threshold dimensions determined by the range of Jacobian
matrix values for homogeneous earth. Since the sensitivity values are
strongly controlled by the spatial resistivity distribution, this value
 222
a)

b1) c1) d1)

P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224

b2) c2) d2)

b3) c3) d3)

Fig. 9. Model 3 — Stratigraphy. a) Original resistivity model b) Inversion resistivity model resulted by the original (b1) and the new (b2) algorithm for the Wennner–Schlumberger data. c) Inversion resistivity model resulted by the original (c1) and
the new (c2) algorithm for the Pole–Dipole data. d) Inversion resistivity model resulted by the original (c1) and the new (c2) algorithm for the Dipole–Dipole data. The relative differences between the inversion models resulted by the original and the
new algorithm for the Wenner–Schlumberger, Pole–Dipole and Dipole–Dipole are shown in figures b3, c3 and d3 respectively.
 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224 223

Fig. 10. (a) Location of the survey area in Germany, (b) photo showing the field measuring arrangement and the SE–NW direction of the long ERT line.

will minimize the possibility to remove significant information from the
Jacobian matrix during the later iterations of the non-linear inversion
procedure.
The resulting sparseness of the Jacobian and smoothness matrices
was appropriately taken into account saving substantial memory re-
sources that can reach up to 96% based on the scale of the inversion
problem. The technique for calculating only the significant Jacobian
values as well as the use of the LSQR routine to iteratively invert the aug-
mented linear system and update the resistivity within the non-linear
iterations result in a fast and efficient algorithm able to cope with
huge amount of data collected from long ERT lines. The use of different
spatial smoothness or other spatial correlation constrains (e.g. Blaschek
et al., 2008; Gallardo and Meju, 2003, 2004; Hermans et al., 2012; Loke
et al., 2003) would not affect the algorithm efficiency, since almost all
such constrains involve sparse linear/linearized equations that are effi-
ciently handled by LSQR. The new algorithm is almost more than one
order of magnitude (~30 times) faster than the original one.
It has been stressed that the definition of the threshold area to calcu-
late the significant part of the Jacobian matrix is actually based on the
distance of the outermost electrodes used to capture a specific resistiv-
ity measurement. It has been demonstrated that the algorithm can be
successfully implemented without any further modification to account
for surface ERT data collected with any kind of electrode configurations
other than Dipole–Dipole (e.g. Wenner–Schlumberger or Pole–Dipole
arrays). Further tests with ERT lines that cannot be considered as
being long (viz. a large number of electrodes) but they are rather typical
in the number of electrodes used (i.e. 50 electrodes in the example of
Figs. 7, 8) illustrate that the “fast” technique can be used to efficiently
invert “typical” ERT lines. This can be useful if there is a need to further
reduce computational resources (speed, memory) such as the case for
time-lapse monitoring.
The proposed algorithm exhibits a similar convergence pattern as
the original one and its application to synthetic and real data sets result-
ed in reconstructed models of comparable accuracy with the standard

Fig. 11. 2D inversion models of the LINE 1 from the data collected in Germany using: (a) the standard and (b) the new algorithm. (c) Relative difference between the inversion models
resulted by the two algorithms. The mean relative difference between two inversion models is 1.9%.
224 P. Tsourlos et al. / Journal of Applied Geophysics 105 (2014) 213–224
approach (mean relative difference between the resistivity inversion
models is on average less than 2%). Finally the rather simplified basic
concept of this algorithm can be easily adopted and transferred
for the inversion of different kinds of tomographic geophysical data
(e.g. induced polarization, controlled source electromagnetic, etc.).
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Basic Research Project of Korea
Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources funded by the Ministry of
Science, ICT & Future Planning, Republic of Korea. The authors would
like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism
and comments that helped to significantly improve the manuscript.
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