Q estimation by combining ISD with LSR method based on shaping-regularized inversion

The quality factor Q is an indispensable parameter for studying wave propagation in viscoelastic media. Q can not only be implemented for improving the quality of wave records but can also be used for directly indicating frequency-dependent anomalies induced by fluids, so it is widely used in seismic exploration and clinical medicine. Q estimation here refers to the extraction of Q information from seismic data; it has aroused lots of attention but is still somewhat controversial due to the limitations of existing methods. In this letter, combined with a logarithmic spectral ratio (LSR) algorithm, we have introduced a sparse-constrained inversion spectral decomposition (ISD) method for average-Q estimation (LSR-ISD), and have used shaping regularization to solve for the spectrum ratio. Then, through regularized linear inversion, average-Q was converted to an interval-Q value. Finally, we have applied this method to synthetic data and field data. Numerical examples and field data application demonstrate that the proposed method produces a series of results with high resolution and good stability.