Methods of Seismic Waveform Inversion

The paper concerns methods for recovering spatial distributions of elastic parameters by inversion of seismic waveforms. The overview covers theoretical and practical issues of a wide range of inversion techniques, from ray-based seismic tomography and inversion of dispersion curves that can retrieve the background trends, to full waveform inversion and reverse-time migration providing high-resolution imaging. Full waveform inversion is currently one of the most important and rapidly developing techniques, which has received a number of up-to-date modifications.