An efficient illumination compensation method for reverse time migration

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AbstractBy directly solving the full two‐way wave equation, reverse time migration has superiority over other imaging algorithms in handling steeply dipping structures and other complicated geological models. Moreover, by incorporating the asymptotic inversion operator into reverse time migration imaging condition, the imaging algorithm is able to give a quantitative estimation of parameter perturbation in high‐frequency approximation sense. However, because conventional asymptotic inversion only accounts for geometrical spreading, uneven illumination due to irregular acquisition geometry and inhomogeneous subsurface at each image point is neglected. The omit of illumination compensation significantly affects the imaging quality. Wave‐equation‐based illumination compensation methods have been extensively studied in the past. However, the traditional wave‐equation‐based illumination compensation methods usually require high computational cost and huge storage. In this paper, we propose an efficient wave‐equation‐based illumination compensation method. Under high‐frequency approximation, we first define a Jacobian determinant to measure the regularity of subsurface illumination, and then illumination compensation operators are proposed based on the Jacobian. Through boundary integration, we further express the illumination compensation operators through extrapolated wavefields; the explicit computation of asymptotic Green's functions is thus avoided, and an efficient illumination compensation implementation for reverse time migration is achieved. Numerical results with both synthetic and field data validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the presented method.