A nonlinear method for imaging with acoustic waves via reduced order model backprojection

We introduce a novel nonlinear imaging method for the acoustic wave equation based on data-driven model order reduction. The objective is to image the discontinuities of the acoustic velocity, a coefficient of the scalar wave equation from the discretely sampled time domain data measured at an array of transducers that can act as both sources and receivers. We treat the wave equation along with transducer functionals as a dynamical system. A reduced order model (ROM) for the propagator of such system can be computed so that it interpolates exactly the measured time domain data. The resulting ROM is an orthogonal projection of the propagator on the subspace of the snapshots of solutions of the acoustic wave equation. While the wavefield snapshots are unknown, the projection ROM can be computed entirely from the measured data, thus we refer to such ROM as data-driven. The image is obtained by backprojecting the ROM. Since the basis functions for the projection subspace are not known, we replace them with the ones computed for a known smooth kinematic velocity model. A crucial step of ROM construction is an implicit orthogonalization of solution snapshots. It is a nonlinear procedure that differentiates our approach from the conventional linear imaging methods (Kirchhoff migration and reverse time migration - RTM). It resolves all dynamical behavior captured by the data, so the error from the imperfect knowledge of the velocity model is purely kinematic. This allows for almost complete removal of multiple reflection artifacts, while simultaneously improving the resolution in the range direction compared to conventional RTM.