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Journal of the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists
RESEARCH ARTICLE

A modified excitation amplitude imaging condition for prestack reverse time migration

Bingluo Gu 1 2 3 Youshan Liu 1 2 Xiaona Ma 1 2 Zhiyuan Li 1 Guanghe Liang 1
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

1 Institute of Geology and Geophysics, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19, Beitucheng Western Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100029, China.

2 University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A, Yuquan Road, Shijingshan District, Beijing 100049, China.

3 Corresponding author. Email: gubingluo@mail.iggcas.ac.cn

Exploration Geophysics 46(4) 359-370 https://doi.org/10.1071/EG14039
Submitted: 4 April 2014  Accepted: 9 November 2014   Published: 19 December 2014

Abstract

In wave-equation-based migration, the imaging condition is an important factor that impacts migration accuracy and efficiency. Among the commonly used imaging conditions, the excitation amplitude imaging condition has high resolution, accuracy and low storage and input/output burden when compared with others. However, the excitation amplitude extracted by this imaging condition in its current form will produce a distorted migration image for certain scenarios. In this paper, a modified excitation amplitude imaging condition is proposed that addresses the above problem and produces migrated images free from distortion for complicated geologic models. In this paper, we propose a method to effectively use the modified shortest path method (MSPM) for extracting the maximum amplitude around the first-arrival events. Then, the excitation amplitude imaging condition is applied to obtain a continuous and clear migration image. This process can, to some extent, improve the distorted migration image produced by the traditional excitation amplitude imaging condition. Some numerical tests with synthetic data of Sigsbee2a and Marmousi-II models show that the improvement is feasible and effective in complex-structure media.

Key words: excitation amplitude imaging condition, modified shortest path method, reverse time migration, traveltime constraint.


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