Coupling direct inversion to common-shot image-domain velocity analysis

Abstract

Migration velocity analysis is a technique used to estimate the large-scale structure of the subsurface velocity model controlling the kinematics of wave propagation. For more stable results, recent studies have proposed to replace migration, adjoint of Born modeling, by the direct inverse of the modeling operator in the context of extended subsurface-offset domain. Following the same strategy, we have developed a two-way-wave-equation-based inversion velocity analysis (IVA) approach for the original surface-oriented shot gathers. We use the differential semblance optimization (DSO) objective function to evaluate the quality of inverted images depending on shot positions and to derive the associated gradient, an essential element to update the macromodel. We evaluate the advantages and limitations through applications of 2D synthetic data sets, first on simple models with a single-reflector embedded in various background velocities and then on the Marmousi model. The direct inverse attenuates migration smiles by compensating for geometric spreading and uneven illuminations. We slightly modified the original DSO objective function to remove spurious oscillations around interface positions in the velocity gradient. These oscillations are related to the fact that the locations of events in the image domain depend on the macromodel. We pay attention to the presence of triplicated wavefields. It appears that IVA is robust even if artifacts are observed in the seismic migrated section. The velocity gradient leads to a stable update, especially after a Gaussian smoothing over a wavelength distance. Coupling common-shot direct inversion to velocity analysis offers new possibilities for the extension to 3D in the future.