Abstract: With the shifting toward deeper, geologically more complex, and more subtle hydrocarbon reservoirs than before, the exploration of oil and gas resources is becoming more and more difficult. The traditional seismic reflection exploration technology can hardly meet the increasing demand for oil and gas, and it is urgent to develop new seismic migration and inversion technologies adapted to complex geological structures. In view of the seismic scattered waves caused by heterogeneous structures in the deep part of the earth, it is possible to solve the technical problems for imaging complex geological structures by developing the seismic inverse scattering migration inversion theory and technology. This paper reviews the development history and basic principles of seismic inverse scattering migration and inversion theory, based on the inverse generalized Radon transform to solve the linearized seismic inverse scattering problem, introduces the technical extension in the geological structure imaging, inversion for petrophysical parameters, multiple attenuation and so on. At the same time, the application to synthetic and real data is also presented, in which the technical advantages and application potential of the inverse scattering method are discussed.