We derive formulae of correction for multi-wave geometric spreading and absorption in layered viscoelastic media, this provides the theoretical foundation for true amplitude compensation of field data and for our sensitivity analysis. The imaging matrix at a plane reflector between viscoelastic media can be determined in the frequency domain using linearized reflection coefficients through Born approximation. We quantitatively analyze the sensitivity by studying eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the imaging matrix. The results show that two linear combinations of petrophysical parameters can be determined from the multi-wave AVO inversion in the case of amplitude compensation. Multi-wave AVO contains the information of attenuation in the media. However, the sensitivity of multi-wave AVO inversion to attenuation is small. We derive formulae of correction for multi-wave geometric spreading and absorption in layered viscoelastic media, this provides the theoretical foundation for true amplitude compensation of field data and for our sensitivity analysis. The imaging matrix at a plane reflector between viscoelastic media can be determined in the frequency domain using linearized reflection coefficients through Born approximation. We quantitatively analyze the sensitivity by studying eigenvalues ​​and eigenvectors of the imaging matrix. The results show that two linear combinations of petrophysical parameters can be determined from the multi-wave AVO inversion in the case of amplitude compensation. Multi-wave AVO contains the information of attenuation in the media. However, the sensitivity of multi-wave AVO inversion to attenuation is small.