A two-dimensional magnetotelluric deep learning inversion approach based on improved Dense Convolutional Network

Magnetotelluric (MT) inversion is an important means of MT data interpretation. The use of deep learning technology for MT inversion has attracted much attention because it is not limited to the initial model, avoids falling into local optimal solutions, and has the strong ability to process large amounts of data. However, obtaining highly reliable deep learning inversion results remains a challenge. In this paper, we have proposed a two-dimensional (2-D) MT inversion method based on the improved Dense Convolutional Network (DenseNet), with the aim of improving the reliability of the 2-D deep learning MT inversion results. First, the MARE2DEM is used to compute the 2-D MT forward responses when establishing the sample set. Then, an improved DenseNet is proposed by incorporating depthwise separable convolution in lieu of standard convolution within dense connection blocks, and embedding the attention mechanism. Depthwise separable convolution splits the standard convolution operation into depthwise and pointwise convolution, effectively capturing spatial features of input data and correlations between channels. Meanwhile, attention mechanism allows the network to assign varying degrees of importance (or attention) to different elements in a sequence of data, thus enhancing its ability of key feature extraction. This design not only retains the inherent feature reuse and alleviates gradient vanishing of DenseNet but also further enhances network performance. The optimized network parameters for the improved DenseNet are obtained by training on the training set, while the validation set is used to adjust hyperparameters and evaluate model performance. Finally, the proposed 2-D deep learning approach is verified by using both synthetic and field data. Experimental results with synthetic data show that the reliability of inversion results obtained by using the proposed algorithm is improved, and the inversion results obtained by using both TE- and TM-mode data is more accurate than those obtained by using the single mode data. The inversion results of field data show that the proposed 2-D MT deep learning inversion approach can effectively detect the subsurface resistivity structure and has a good application prospect.