Patent ID: 8792303

Claim:
A method for performing azimuthal simultaneous elastic inversion of seismic data of a subterranean formation, the method comprising: forward modeling including determining a HTI stiffness matrix from the seismic data, using parameterization, for at least one azimuth and at least one angle of incidence from said seismic data, wherein the HTI stiffness matrix varies spatially with respect to one or more layers, applying a Bond transformation to the HTI stiffness matrix to rotate an isotropy symmetry plane to be referenced with respect to true North, and calculating a reflectivity series for the at least one azimuth angle and the at least one angle of incidence using one or more reflection coefficients, wherein anisotropy media is incorporated; and determining parameters to be used by the parameterization in a next iteration, wherein the forward modeling and the determining of the parameters are performed iteratively using a central processing unit of a computer.