Provided are an apparatus and method for imaging the subsurface structure of a target area by using waveform inversion. In the apparatus and method, the subsurface structure of a target area is estimated using waveform inversion of a seismic signal in the frequency domain, the Laplace domain, or the Laplace-Fourier domain, and an objective function is defined by applying a weighting function such that the objective function makes a different contribution for each frequency, each Laplace damping constant, or each Laplace-Fourier damping constant. The objective function is not limited to a particular type of objective function and a weighting function can be automatically determined when a gradient vector for each frequency, each Laplace damping constant, or each Laplace-Fourier damping constant is normalized. In addition, a gradient direction for all frequencies can be defined by applying another weighting function to the sum of respective gradient vectors for all frequencies, all Laplace damping constants, or all Laplace-Fourier damping constants, wherein the weighting function can also be automatically determined by normalization.