Rapid High-Frequency Wave Imaging Improves Resolution of Complex Geology

This paper describes the implementation of one-way wave equation in slowness domain outputting gathers up to Nyquist frequency, which can be used to generate high-resolution seismic sections; the gathers can be used for amplitude-vs.-offset (AVO) studies. The implications of the methodology are presented with example data sets such as marine, ocean-bottom cable (OBC), and land 3D seismic.

Introduction

Reverse time migration (RTM) has long been used for solving complex imaging when ray-based methods fail because of complexity in subsurface imaging. RTM has delivered major success during the past few decades but has limitations. The model input to RTM, because of the two-way full elastic method, must be highly precise.