4D active time constrained resistivity inversion

Techniques that incorporate regularization in space and time have been proposed to reduce inversion artifacts that may lead a misinterpretation of geophysical monitoring data. Applying this time regularization, however, may result in a model too smoothly carrying in the time domain. To alleviate this problem, we propose an algorithm for inverting time-lapse resistivity monitoring data. Here the time regularization is not considered to be constant between different time steps but is now allowed to vary depending on the degree of spatial resistivity changes occurring between different monitoring stages. Two methods are proposed to assign different time Lagrangian values, one based on a pre-estimation during execution time, and one using a-priori information. Both methods require a threshold to characterize the significance of the observed resistivity changes with time. We performed numerous numerical experiments using synthetic data to provide reasonable threshold values. Synthetic data tests illustrate that the new algorithm, named 4D Active Time Constrained (4D-ATC), produces in most cases improved time-lapse images when compared with existing techniques. Further the applicability of the new scheme is demonstrated with real data. Overall, the new algorithm is shown to be a useful tool for processing time-lapse resistivity data, which can be used with minor modifications to other types of time-lapse geophysical data. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.