Improving input/output performance in 2D and 3D angle-domain common-image gathers from reverse time migration

Abstract

We have developed a new method of extracting angle-domain common-image gathers (ADCIGs) from prestack reverse time migration (RTM) that has minimal intermediate storage requirements. To include multipathing, we applied an imaging condition for prestack RTM that uses multiple excitation image times. Instead of saving the full-source snapshots at all time steps, we picked and saved only a few of the highest amplitude arrivals, and their corresponding excitation times, of the source wavefield at each grid point, and we crosscorrelated with the receiver wavefield. When extracting the ADCIGs from RTM, we calculated the source propagation direction from the gradient of the excitation times. The result was that the source time snapshots do not have to be saved or reconstructed during RTM or while extracting ADCIGs. We calculated the receiver propagation direction from Poynting vectors during the receiver extrapolation at each time step and the reflector normal direction by the phase-gradient method. With a new strategy that uses three direction vectors (the source and receiver propagation directions as well as the reflector normal direction), we provided more reliable ADCIGs that are free of low-wavenumber artifacts than any two of them do separately, when the migration velocity model was near to the correct velocity model. The 2D and 3D synthetic tests demonstrated the successful application of the new algorithms with acceptable accuracy, improved storage efficiency, and without an input/output bottleneck.