The paper proposes an effective treatment of hyperparameters in the Bayesian inference of a scalar field from indirect observations. Obtaining the joint posterior distribution of the field and its hyperparameters is challenging due to the infinite dimensionality of the field, which requires a finite parametrization involving hyperparameters.
The authors introduce a change of measure (CoM) approach to overcome the limitations of the previously proposed change of coordinates (CoC) method. In the CoM approach, the hyperparameter dependencies are transferred to the prior distribution of the field coordinates in a fixed reference basis, rather than modifying the field representation itself. This leads to a hierarchical Bayesian formulation where the likelihood only depends on the field coordinates, while the prior distribution depends on the hyperparameters.
The CoM approach avoids the need to recompute the eigenmodes of the autocovariance function at each MCMC step, which was a major computational bottleneck in the CoC method. The authors also leverage polynomial chaos expansions to construct surrogate models for the forward model predictions and the CoM-derived quantities, further accelerating the MCMC sampling.
The performance of the CoM method is assessed on two test cases: a transient diffusion problem and a seismic traveltime tomography problem. The results show that the CoM approach is consistent with the CoC method, while being more efficient and providing a better physical interpretation of the role of the hyperparameters.
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arxiv.org
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