Jessé C. Costa

A comparison of imaging conditions for wave-equation shot-profile migration

The application of a deconvolution imaging condition in wave-equation shot-profile migration is important to provide illumination compensation and amplitude recovery. Particularly if the aim is to successfully recover a measure of the medium reflectivity, an imaging condition that destroys amplitudes is unacceptable. We study a set of imaging conditions with illumination compensation. The imaging conditions are evaluated by the quality of the output amplitudes and artifacts produced. In numerical experiments using a vertically inhomogeneous velocity model, the best of all imaging conditions we tested is the one that divides the crosscorrelation of upgoing and downgoing wavefields by the autocorrelation of the downgoing wavefield, also known as the illumination map. In an application to Marmousi data, unconditional division by autocorrelation turned out to be unstable. Effective stabilization was achieved by smoothing the illumination map.

Obliquity-correction imaging condition for reverse time migration

The quality of seismic images obtained by reverse time migration (RTM) strongly depends on the imaging condition. We propose a new imaging condition that is motivated by stationary phase analysis of the classical crosscorrelation imaging condition. Its implementation requires the Poynting vector of the source and receiver wavefields at the imaging point. An obliquity correction is added to compensate for the reflector dip effect on amplitudes of RTM. Numerical experiments show that using an imaging condition with obliquity compensation improves reverse time migration by reducing backscattering artifacts and improving illumination compensation.

CROSS-BOREHOLE TOMOGRAPHY IN ANISOTROPIC MEDIA

Anisotropy has significant effect on traveltime cross‐borehole tomography. Even relatively weak anisotropy cannot be ignored if accurate velocity estimates are desired, since isotropic traveltime tomography treats anisotropy as inhomogeneity. Traveltime data in our examples were synthetically generated by a ray‐tracing code for anisotropic media, and the computed quasi‐P‐wave traveltimes were subsequently inverted using the “dual tomography” technique (Carrion, 1991). The results of the tomographic inversion show typical artifacts due to the anisotropy, and that accurate imaging is impossible without taking the anisotropy into account.

Wide-angle FD and FFD migration using complex Padé approximations

Seismic migration by downward continuation using the one-way wave-equation approximations has two shortcomings: imaging steep-dip reflectors and handling evanescent waves. Complex Pade approximations allow a better treatment of evanescent modes, stabilizing finite-difference migration without requiring special treatment for the migration domain boundaries. Imaging of steep-dip reflectors can be improved using several terms in the Pade expansion. We discuss the implementation and evaluation of wide-angle complex Pade approximations for finite-difference and Fourier finite-difference migration methods. The dispersion relation and the impulsive response of the migration operator provide criteria to select the number of terms and coefficients in the Pade expansion. This ensures stability for a prescribed maximum propagation direction. The implementations are validated on the Marmousi model data set and SEG/EAGE salt model data.

Time-migration velocity analysis by image-wave propagation of common-image gathers

Image-wave propagation or velocity continuation describes the variation of the migrated position of a seismic event as a function of migration velocity. Image-wave propagation in the common-image gather (CIG) domain can be combined with residual-moveout analysis for iterative migration velocity analysis (MVA). Velocity continuation of CIGs leads to a detection of those velocities in which events flatten. Although image-wave continuation is based on the assumption of a constant migration velocity, the procedure can be applied in inhomogeneous media. For this purpose, CIGs obtained by migration with an inhomogeneous macrovelocity model are continued starting from a constant reference velocity. The interpretation of continued CIGs, as if they were obtained from residual migrations, leads to a correction formula that translates residual flattening velocities into absolute time-migration velocities. In this way, the migration velocity model can be improved iteratively until a satisfactory result is reached. Wi...

Migration velocity analysis by double path-integral migration

The idea of path-integral imaging is to sum over the migrated images obtained for a set of migration velocity models. Velocities where common-image gathers align horizontally are stationary, thus favoring these images in the overall stack. The overall image forms with no knowledge of the true velocity model. However, the velocity information associated with the final image can be determined in the process. By executing the path-integral imaging twice and weighting one of the stacks with the velocity value, the stationary velocities that produce the final image can then be extracted by a division of the two images. The velocity extraction, interpolation, and smoothing can be done fully automatically, without the need for human interpretation or other intervention. A numerical example demonstrated that quantitative information about the migration velocity model can be determined by double path-integral migration. The so-obtained velocity model can then be used as a starting model for subsequent velocity analysis tools like migration velocity analysis or tomographic methods.

2.5D reverse-time migration

Reverse-time migration (RTM) in 2.5D offers an alternative to improve resolution and amplitude when imaging 2D seismic data. Wave propagation in 2.5D assumes translational invariance of the velocity model. Under this assumption, we implement a finite-difference (FD) modeling algorithm in the mixed time-space/wavenumber domain to simulate the velocity and pressure fields for acoustic wave propagation and apply it in RTM. The 2.5D FD algorithm is truly parallel, allowing an efficient implementation in clusters. Storage and computing time requirements are strongly reduced compared to a full 3D FD simulation of the wave propagation. This feature makes 2.5D RTM much more efficient than 3D RTM, while achieving improved modeling of 3D geometrical spreading and phase properties of the seismic waveform in comparison to 2D RTM. Together with an imaging condition that compensates for uneven illumination and/or the obliquity factor, this allows recover of amplitudes proportional to the earth’s reflectivity. Numerical...

Anisotropic complex Padé hybrid finite-difference depth migration

Standard real-valued finite-difference (FD) and Fourier finite-difference (FFD) migrations cannot handle evanescent waves correctly, which can lead to numerical instabilities in the presence of strong velocity variations. A possible solution to these problems is the complex Pade approximation, which avoids problems with evanescent waves by rotating the branch cut of the complex square root. We have applied this approximation to the acoustic wave equation for vertical transversely isotropic media to derive more stable FD and hybrid FD/FFD migrations for such media. Our analysis of the dispersion relation of the new method indicates that it should provide more stable migration results with fewer artifacts and higher accuracy at steep dips. Our studies lead to the conclusion that the rotation angle of the branch cut that should yield the most stable image is 60° for FD migration, as confirmed by numerical impulse responses and work with synthetic data.

Fast estimation of common-reflection-surface parameters using local slopes

Present-day techniques to estimate the traveltime parameters of the common-reflection-surface (CRS) stack are tedious, time-consuming, and expensive processes based on local coherence analyses along a large number of trial surfaces. With the 2D CRS method, faster and cheaper determination is possible. The complete set of CRS parameters can be extracted from seismic data by an application of modern local-slope-extraction techniques. The necessary information about the CRS parameters is contained in the slopes of the common-midpoint section at the central point and one or several common-offset sections in its vicinity. We studied two procedures for the CRS parameter extraction technique. Their difference lies in the way the common-offset parameters are determined. One technique requires slope-derivative information (a possible source of instability); the other uses slope information at two different locations and less data redundancy. Testing on a synthetic data example proved that the procedures are suffic...

A Comparison of Splitting Techniques for 3D Complex Padé Fourier Finite Difference Migration

Three-dimensional wave-equation migration techniques are still quite expensive because of the huge matrices that need to be inverted. Several techniques have been proposed to reduce this cost by splitting the full 3D problem into a sequence of 2D problems. We compare the performance of splitting techniques for stable 3D Fourier finite-difference (FFD) migration techniques in terms of image quality and computational cost. The FFD methods are complex Pade FFD and FFD plus interpolation, and the compared splitting techniques are two- and four-way splitting as well as alternating four-way splitting, that is, splitting into the coordinate directions at one depth and the diagonal directions at the next depth level. From numerical examples in homogeneous and inhomogeneous media, we conclude that, though theoretically less accurate, alternate four-way splitting yields results of comparable quality as full four-way splitting at the cost of two-way splitting.