Delaunay Triangulation-based Spatially Constrained Inversion for Quasi 3D Modeling of Airborne TEM Data

The spatially constrained inversion (SCI) is a robust methodology for quasi-3D modeling of geoelectrical and EM data of varying spatial density, using a 1D forward solution. Information migrate horizontally through spatial constraints applied between nearest neighboring soundings, and allow resolution of layers that would be locally poorly resolved. The constraints are built using the Delaunay triangulation, which ensures automatic adaptation to data density variations. In this study the SCI was applied to airborne Time domain EM soundings, but it can be implemented also with other data types. The field case study proves that the SCI produces laterally smooth results that respect the 3D geological variations of sedimentary settings, while suppressing the elongated artifacts commonly seen in profile oriented data sets.