Applications and Challenges of Reverse Time Migration of Multiples

Abstract

In many processing flows for marine streamer data, freesurface multiples are regarded as noise and significant efforts are made to remove them. However, this multiple wavefield actually contains additional information that can be useful, particularly for illuminating shallow and/or complex structures. We recently modified our reverse time migration (RTM) algorithm, enabling it to image correctly between the primary wavefield and the first-order multiple wavefield. We call this modification reverse time migration of multiples (RTMM). We demonstrate that RTMM can take advantage of the extra illumination of the multiple wavefield to produce better or complementary images in shallow-water areas and in regions with complex salt structures. We also explore one of the major challenges of RTMM, which is crosstalk noise, and discuss some tactics for addressing it.