Seismic Tomography using Graph Theoretical Ray Tracing

Seismic tomography using the graph theoretical method of ray tracing is performed in two synthetic data sets with laterally varying velocity structures. The straight-ray tomography shows so poor results in imaging the laterally varying velocity structure that the ray-traced tomographic techniques should be used. Conventional ray tracing methods have serious drawbacks, i.e. problems of convergence and local minima, when they are applied to seismic tomography. The graph theretical method finds good approximated raypaths in rapidly varying media even in shadow zones, where shooting methods meet with convergence problems. The graph theoretical method ensures the globally minimal traveltime raypath while bending methods often cause local minima problems. Especially, the graph theoretical method is efficient in case that many sources and receivers exist, since it can find the traveltimes and corresponding raypaths to all receivers from a specific source at one time. Moreover, the algorithm of graph theoretical method is easily applicable to the ray tracing in anisotropic media, and even to the three dimensional case. Among the row-active inversion techniques, the conjugate gradient (CG) method is used because of fast convergence and high efficiency. The iterative sequence of the ray tracing by the graph theoretical method and the inversion by the CG method is an efficient and robust algorithm for seismic tomography in laterally varying velocity structures.